The Flood
by Justice237
Summary: Darkness. That's the first thing you'll know if you fall down the pit. Many have gotten trapped there. None have escaped - not without horrible effects. Who would've thought that a simple camping trip would've led to the disappearance of three kids? With ghostly guards and creepy creatures hunting them, will the kids find the hidden light at the end of this long, dark tunnel?
1. Prologue

**Before we start, I'd just like to give a shoutout to Dark Heart 945, who not only designed the cover art and helped me write the summary (I suck at summaries) and story a little, but is also an amazing person and friend, and I'd like to wish her a very happy birthday from here in Boston, Massachusetts.**

In the spirit of the start of the summer holidays, Mike and May-Li had taken the residents of Ashdene Ridge on a camping trip, with the promise of making up for the countryside disaster that had taken place during Mike's absence.

Now, it was past 11 o'clock at night, and they had decided to pass the time telling scary stories around the campfire. Or rather, 'scary' stories.

"And then, after the brutal massacre, the young boy fled away into the night, and is still out there to this day," Tyler finished ominously, holding his torch under his chin.

He was met with looks of disinterest and eye rolls.

"Really, Tyler?" Sasha sighed. "Literally everyone knows the story of Jeff the Killer!"

"There's no way it can be really scary," Ryan said. "Cutting off his eyelids? He'd go blind within five minutes!"

"And cutting his face like that has to result in a really bad infection," Jody added. "He'd die eventually."

"The Joker did it," Mo pointed out.

"Yeah, but he's in a fictional story about a millionaire who, instead of donating to charity, chooses to spend his money on crazy gadgets and ridiculous bat costumes," Tee pointed out. "It's not meant to be realistic."

"How about a story that some people say is actually true then?" Mike proposed.

"Mike, these urban legends are rubbish," Bailey said.

"Just here me out," Mike insisted. "For many years, people have been going missing down a mysterious hole..."

"Like Alice in Wonderland?" asked Harry.

Mike seemed to hesitate, "Almost, think of it as a dark, mysterious, terrifying, black pit of doom..."

Ryan scoffed. "Yeah, right."

"Shut up Ryan, this seems cool," Sasha hissed.

Mike continued, "Down in the woods, there's police tape around the hole, prohibiting people from going anywhere near it. Most victims of the black oil-coloured pit never return. Those that do ... suffer the most disastrous consequences."

Mike paused for a second, taking in the children's intrigued expressions, before deciding to cut it off there. "I'd tell you more, but you'd probably all have nightmares."

"No, no," protested Tyler. "Tell us more!"

"Yeah, tell us!" Floss insisted.

"Alright, if you say so," Mike said. "Those that are found after falling down the pit ... some have gotten PTSD from being down there-"

"What's PTSD?" Finn interrupted.

"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder," Ryan explained. "It's when you experience something really horrible and then you can get flashbacks to that event, nightmares, constant fear and ..." he swallowed, "... panic attacks."

Finn looked like he was going to ask more questions, but Mike continued before that could happen, for which Ryan was very grateful. He didn't feel like elaborating on the details of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

"Thank you Ryan," Mike said. "Anyway, some have gotten PTSD from being down there, some have lost limbs, and some have been rendered utterly physically and mentally disabled. They may have gotten away, but no one makes it out without long-term souvenirs. The same became of the investigators that went down there. That was when the police decided to close the case once and for all."

"Legend has it that the pit is still there _in these very woods,_ to this day, waiting for its next victim ..."

The kids' eyes were all popping out of their heads as Mike finished, "Goodnight, kids. Sleep tight... Don't fall down the pit..."

Jody rolled her eyes, "Same to you, Mike."

* * *

"What a load of crap," Ryan commented, slumping down on his sleeping bag in the tent he shared with Bailey and Tyler.

"I don't know, sounds legit to me Ryan," Bailey said.

"What about it?" Ryan asked. "How could a simple pit give you PTSD? Aron Ralston was stuck down in a canyon with his arm literally stuck between a rock and a hard place for over 5 days. Not only did he have to resort to drinking his own pee, but he had to use the rock to _break his arm_ so that he could _saw it off_ with a dull knife. _Sans anesthesia._ "

Tyler cringed. "Sounds familiar."

"The film 127 Hours was based on his story," Ryan explained. "I wouldn't advise watching it though, Tyler, if you find the story of Jeff the Killer scary."

"You watch it then," Bailey scoffed.

"I already have," Ryan said.

What Ryan didn't mention was the fact that he'd been forced to watch the film on a dare when he was 12, and it had - embarrassingly - caused him to retch uncontrollably before fainting out cold. He'd won the dare - but at a price.

"You were going somewhere with this?" Bailey prompted, making Ryan realised that he'd gone off on a tangent.

"If Aron Ralston could go through all that without getting PTSD, how can a simple pit in the middle of the woods give it to people?"

"We're not all Aron Ralston," Bailey said.

"And we don't know what's down that pit," Tyler added. "I mean, what if there are evil monsters down there? What if _Slenderman_ is down there?!"

"He doesn't kill that way," Ryan dismissed. "It's just an urban legend, Tyler, just like Jeff the Killer."

"Alright then," Bailey replied, sitting up straight, spurring his rival to do likewise to match his eye level. "If you're so sure this can't be real, then how about we go into the woods and find it ourselves?"

Ryan frowned, he hadn't been anticipating that. However, before he had time to consider Bailey's offer, Tyler chose to interject.

"This is something," the curly-haired boy snorted. "You two sneaking off into the woods together ... alone ..." He wolf-whistled.

* * *

Making his way across the campsite just a minute later, Tyler had an issue to fix.

Ryan giving him the most deadly of death glares had been enough to make him regret his little innuendo and be willing to apologise immediately - but Bailey had grabbed him in a headlock and was messing up his afro before his mouth and throat could form a syllable.

That was why he was going over to Jody's tent now. He usually wasn't for tattling, but he didn't fancy sleeping in the same tent as two people who seemed ready to kill him in his sleep.

Tent doors couldn't knock, so he settled for batting the tarpaulin. The door was eventually unzipped by Carmen, who looked surprised to see him there.

"Oh, hey Tyler," she greeted. "What's up?"

"I can't sleep tonight," Tyler let out. "Ryan and Bailey are out for my head."

"Why?!" she laughed.

"Come in," Jody invited,

Tyler did, despite the fact that there was hardly any more room in the tent for a kitten.

"So, we were talking about Mike's story about the pit, and Ryan kept saying that it can't have been real, so Bailey suggested that they go and check it out for themselves since it's apparently in these woods," Tyler explained. "So I decided to make a joke about them going off into the woods alone together ..."

Tee, Carmen and Jody sniggered.

"Then Ryan gave me a death glare, Bailey grabbed me in a headlock, and now I'm scared they'll kill me in my sleep," Tyler finished.

Jody pursed her lips, before she climbed past her friends and out of the tent, making her way towards the boys' tent, Tyler trailing behind her.

"Ryan, Bailey!" she yelled, whacking the tarpaulin from above. "Open up!"

The tent door was unzipped a few seconds later, revealing an annoyed looking Ryan and a confused Bailey.

"You will not-" Jody was cut off by Ryan's exasperated sigh.

"We're not gonna kill Tyler in his sleep," he said, before discreetly adding: "At least, _I'm_ not going to. I can't speak for Bailey here."

"I'm not going to kill him," Bailey said.

"Good," Jody asserted sternly, before her tone changed. "So, tell us about this plan to check out the pit."

Tyler crawled out from behind her and sat on his sleeping bag in anticipation. Jody followed, plonking herself down beside him.

"Why should we tell you?" Ryan asked, raising an eyebrow.

Jody shrugged. "Maybe I want to join in."

Their eyes widened. "Really?!" Tyler asked, his eyebrows nearly disappearing under his curly hair.

Jody nodded. "I'm interested - it has to be more interesting than gutting fish tomorrow!"

Bailey grimaced in agreement. "Alright, you can come along and check it out with us."

Ryan nodded slightly, before they all looked to Tyler with questioning looks.

Tyler shook his head. "No thanks, guys. I mean, whether the story is true or not, I'm not taking any chances. Better safe than sorry, you know."

Bailey shrugged. "Alright, fair enough. So guys, we go into the woods and try and find this pit."

"We won't," Ryan said. "It's just a story. And if we do, it'll be nothing special."

How very wrong he was.


	2. The Light is Fading

**Never underestimate how uncomfortable it is to have to sleep on a plane for eight hours next to a man who snores like an elephant when all you want to do is watch Spotlight.**

 **Sorry Randomguest 815, I don't actually live in Massachusetts, I was just holidaying there. It was pretty great, except for the sunburn.**

Thus, that very next morning, Ryan and Bailey exacted their bet. If the pit story was real, Ryan paid Bailey £15. If it wasn't, Bailey paid Ryan. Jody was neutral on the matter.

However, before they could go through with it, they had to endure Mike demonstrating how to gut a fish.

"How are we gonna get out?" Jody hissed to the boys.

"Tell Mike we need to pee in the woods," Bailey muttered.

"At the same time?" Ryan whispered. "That'll look odd, and they'll get suspicious if we stay out too long."

"We'll just sneak away then," Jody sighed. "We can be fast."

When at long last, Mike allowed the kids to attempt gutting fish themselves, Ryan, Bailey and Jody used the moving crowd as a cover for their escape. Fifteen minutes later, they were trekking through the woods in search of the alleged pit.

"We might've gone too far," Jody observed, glancing at the thick woods behind them.

"Yeah, there's no pit here," Ryan said. "Let's get back, or they'll get suspicious."

Bailey pressed further on, determined not to lose £15 to his rival. "Nah, I'm not giving up just yet."

"Mike said that there was police tape around the pit," Jody recalled. "That shouldn't be too hard to find."

"Except we haven't found it," Ryan replied. "Guys, are we seriously going to search every square metre of these woods in search of this pit?"

Jody and Bailey paused and glanced at him, then at each other, before Bailey simply said, "Yep," and continued on.

Ryan rolled his eyes, but followed him reluctantly anyway. He wouldn't admit it, but these cold, isolated woods were giving him the creeps.

When yet another fifteen minutes had passed, even Jody was starting to get fed up.

"I'm bored," she moaned. "It's not worth it Bailey, let's go back."

"Just hand over the 15 quid and call it a day!" Ryan agreed, slumping hard against a young tree and sliding down the trunk in exasperation.

The bark moved down with him.

He turned and looked at the tree, standing up. To his surprise, the bark he had taken off the tree simply slid back onto it on its own.

Okay, now he was really getting creeped.

"Erm, guys," Ryan called, trying to stop his voice from betraying his fear, "I think you should see ..."

He trailed off as he turned his head to look at them, only to see that they both had looks of dread on their faces. Looking around, he saw the police tape materialising around them, in a circle roughly 10 metres in diameter.

Before any one of them could say anything, the ground under them dissolved from existence.

* * *

The first thing that Bailey was aware of when he woke up was that it was dark.

The second was that his left hand hurt. A lot.

"What's goin' on?" he mumbled out loud to no one in particular, blinking to help his eyes adjust.

It was then he realised that he was lying on the ground. He tried picking himself up, but a sharp pain shot through his left hand and arm, causing him to let out a cry of, "Ow!"

Gritting his teeth, he tried again using mostly his other hand, but realised that he had a weight on top of him.

Bailey rubbed his eyes, and realised that he was in an almost pitch black chamber, and with a twist of his head, he saw that it was Ryan lying on top of him, unconscious.

Bailey shifted himself out from under Ryan slowly, trying to make sure that the younger boy didn't get hurt.

"Bailey, Ryan, can you hear me?" said Jody's voice suddenly.

Bailey glanced around and saw a dark shape squirming around a few feet away. It was Jody.

"I'm okay, mostly," Bailey answered. "I think I've busted my hand though."

Jody crawled closer, getting out her phone and shining the torch at Bailey, seeing Ryan slumped by him. Bailey rubbed his injured wrist absently.

"Let me see that," Jody offered, moving closer with her phone torch and shining it on his wrist. Even on Bailey's dark skin, the bruising and inflammation was visible.

"You probably sprained it in the fall," Jody said. "Wait - the fall!"

Bailey looked up - there was a small chink of light, the size of a postcard, above them. How far had they fallen?

"HEY, IS THERE ANYONE UP THERE?!" Jody yelled as loud as she could, hoping that she would be heard by anyone who'd decided to go exploring. "WE'RE STUCK DOWN IN THE PIT!"

There was nothing by means of response - apart from waking Ryan up.

"Shut up," he mumbled.

"Ryan!" Jody ran over to him and shook him by the shoulders. "Wake up, and start yelling! They need to hear us!"

"Good luck with that," Ryan muttered, still not fully awake. "The hole is closing up!"

"Don't be stu-" Bailey was cut off when he looked up and saw the patch of light darkening away before his eyes, shrouding them all in darkness, the only light being provided by Jody's torch.

Their eyes stayed fixed on the spot above them where the light used to be, before Bailey turned to Ryan and said, "Looks like you owe me 15 quid."

"I think that's the least of our worries right now," Jody commented. "How the hell did this pit open up out of nowhere?"

Ryan said, "When I slid down that tree, the bark moved down the trunk with me, and then slid back on by itself."

"So you triggered it?!" Bailey realised. "Great, so this is all your fault."

Ryan blinked, sitting up properly. "My fault?! Who's brilliant idea was it to go looking for this pit in the first place?!"

"Guys!" Jody interrupted. "Blaming each other won't get us out of this pit."

Ryan rolled his eyes. "Pass me your phone," he said to Jody.

Jody handed it to him, Ryan stood up and shone it upwards.

The walls of the pit were nothing but steep, dirty rock - no means to be found of climbing out. The spot where they had apparently fallen from was closed over, with what looked like a slab of straight up dirt in its place.

"Shit," Ryan muttered.

Jody blinked. "Wait - give it back!"

Ryan did. Jody shone the torch around and saw a long dark tunnel just a few feet away from them.

"Let's go," Bailey decided.

"No!" Ryan protested. "You don't know what could be down there!"

"Still, I'm not staying still here," Jody retorted. "There might be a way out! It's either that or we all die down here!"

Ryan sighed. "Fine, just don't say I didn't warn you."

The three children set off tentatively down the tunnel, all three of them constantly on guard. The ground crunched under their feet as they tread.

"Stop," Bailey said suddenly. He was looking intently at the ground. Jody and Ryan followed his gaze.

Beneath their feet, partially buried by the earth and stones, was some wood. It was old, splintery and rotting in places, but they found it was attached in rows to two parallel cast iron tracks.

"It's a train track," Ryan observed, his brown eyes wide.

"Why would there be a railway tunnel down here?" Jody asked.

"An underground train could use these tracks," Bailey theorised. "Maybe they still do."

"Not likely." Ryan shook his head. "See how old the track is? All rotten and broken? No, trains haven't run on these tracks for a long, long time."

"Wait," Jody realised. "What did Mike say about the people who came here again?"

Ryan frowned, trying to recall Mike's words that night at the campfire. "I think he said ... that some people who come here never return, but others have lost limbs, some have been utterly physically and mentally disabled, and some have gotten PTSD ..." Ryan trailed off, his eyes widening as it dawned on him exactly what they had gotten themselves into.

"Oh God," Ryan let out, his chest tightening.

"Ryan, you okay?" Jody asked, noticing the boy's sudden pallor.

 _Damn it Ryan!_ Ryan screamed in his head. _Now they're gonna know!_

The knowledge of this did nothing to help Ryan's current state of panic. He couldn't breathe, his chest hurt, his face was sweating, he felt hot and cold at the same time, his whole body was shaking violently and overall, he didn't have a shadow of a doubt in his mind that _holy crap I'm gonna die we're all gonna die oh God I'm actually gonna die down here-_

"Ryan!" His train of thought was interrupted by Jody's voice, but he couldn't grasp onto her, and instead found himself groping blindly for the tunnel wall, trying to stop his legs from giving out.

"Come on Ryan!" Jody urged, trying to support him by holding his arm, though she couldn't help being slightly taken aback herself by what was happening. Out of all people, she thought, Ryan would be the least likely to have a panic attack. "Just focus on the sound of my voice, and breathe."

It was an agonisingly long 15 minutes they spent stationary in the tunnel, as Ryan did his level best to get a grip on himself again. But finally the panic attack passed, and Ryan was left slumped and panting against the cavernous wall, the perspiration on his face glinting in the torch light.

"What's wrong?" Jody raised an eyebrow, peering at Ryan.

Ryan couldn't respond for a while, he was catching his breath.

"Well it's obvious isn't it?!" sneered Bailey. "He's just had a panic attack, you nitwit!"

"I know that," Jody growled, "only, why did he have it?"

Ryan's head just sagged until his chin rested on his chest, his breathing still ragged.

"I'd rather not talk about it," he whispered, his voice almost imperceptible.

He felt like a mess. Not only did he have a panic attack in front of Bailey and Jody, but the two halves of himself were at war with each other.

His rational mind said that the panic attack was not his fault and therefore he shouldn't be ashamed of having it, but the more prevalent portion of his being - the one that valued pride and image above most other things - was still beating himself over about this display of weakness. _Pathetic ... you can't keep your damn emotions under control, because you didn't have your meds just once!_

 _Stop it!_ Shouted his rational mind. _If you miss a dose of a benzo, the panic attacks come back stronger! Everyone on benzos knows that!_

"I won't judge, I promise," Jody persisted. Ryan couldn't bring himself to look her in the eye.

"Come on, just leave that," Bailey urged. "We've got bigger worries."

Jody seemed reluctant to leave the issue of Ryan's panic attack alone, but she eventually complied when Ryan gestured that he was okay with them moving forward.

He pulled himself off the floor and they trekked on through the railway tunnel.


	3. Chasing Your Doom

Eventually the children reached what seemed to be some sort of clearing - there was larger, open area by the side of the track, clearly the platform, and the track continued through the tunnel leading away from it.

"Stop," Ryan warned, stopping abruptly and squinting through the tunnel. Jody shone her torch in the direction of his gaze to help him.

"What are you looking for?" Bailey inquired.

Ryan's forehead was creased in a deep concentrated frown. "I swear to God that I saw something in that tunnel."

"What is this 'something'?" Jody asked, suspicious that Ryan may only be winding them up.

"A person," Ryan described briefly.

"Why would a person be down here?" Bailey questioned.

"How do you think we got down here?" Ryan pointed out.

"We fell down a pit," Jody stated.

"Exactly," Ryan responded. "Maybe they'll know what to do."

"If they knew what to do, they wouldn't still be down here," Bailey retorted.

"Well it's worth a try," Jody insisted.

They pressed on past the platform and through the tunnel, Jody flicking her torch around erratically. Yet there was no sign of this person Ryan had spoken of - not even footsteps or breathing.

"Are you _sure_ you saw this person?" Bailey asked suspiciously, raising an eyebrow.

"I swear on my life," Ryan responded, too busy trying to source out this person to concentrate properly.

"Well I'm pretty sure the tunnel is getting narrower!" Jody said suddenly, her head snapping back and forth. "I can't stand small spaces!"

"Relax," Ryan said casually. "You stay here with your fear of the unknown, and I'll go on ahead and see what's there!"

"Good luck doing that without a torch, mate," Bailey sneered. "What if you have another panic attack?"

Ryan scowled, brought out his own phone, turned the torch on and shone it in Bailey's face as if to prove a point, before setting off down the tunnel alone, without another word.

"What an idiot," Jody sighed.

"You do realise it was your idea to go down this tunnel anyway?" Bailey pointed out.

"It was _yours_ to go looking for this pit," Jody retorted.

That had him.

Meanwhile, Ryan strode out confidently along the tunnel, alone, his phone torch lighting the way ahead. Or rather, he tried to stride out confidently. He was pretty sure that Jody's statement of the tunnel's increasing narrowness had been her own claustrophobia playing tricks on her mind, but Ryan couldn't deny the hairs standing up all over his body, though the air in the tunnel was warm and stale. Ryan was _slightly_ claustrophobic himself - or more specifically, he had a fear of suffocation. (Naturally, his panic attacks did nothing to help with this.)

He sighed, the resigned sound echoing off the stone walls and ceiling. Why oh why hadn't he taken his benzos?

 _Because you couldn't take it with everyone there,_ said a little voice in his head.

Ryan reached into his pocket, popped out one pill and swallowed it dry. He took his benzos anywhere he went - you could never be too safe, as shown with his little episode back there, and he certainly didn't want another one of those!

As he continued on, Ryan wasn't sure whether he felt more or less scared. The tunnel wasn't too narrow, and his torch lit most of the way ahead, but he had this strange paranoia that any moment, a runaway train was going to come rattling down the track, from either behind or in front of him, and kill him, in spite of his rationale that trains hadn't been running through the tunnels for a very long time. Though it might just be a side effect of walking on a train track.

He'd been so lost in thought that he didn't realise at first that he had reached a fork in the track, with a smaller tunnel trailing off from the main one.

Which one to go down?

If only Bailey and Jody were here - then they could split up and see what was down each tunnel.

But what if they didn't meet up again? What if the tunnels branched off to unthinkable numbers of other tunnels, and they got lost in the sprawling maze, apart, and never returned to above ground?

From his panic attack up until this point, Ryan had been aware of a slight but dismal ache in his chest, albeit only subconsciously as he had other things to focus on. But at this point, at the admittedly terrifying prospect of getting lost in this potential tunnel maze and being completely at the mercy of whatever was down there - and the person that Ryan had caught sight of - the ache increased at least threefold and became an insistent throbbing that permeated his entire chest, left shoulder and arm. Having read the Maze Runner book series, this only increased his paranoia, though his rational mind said that he was highly unlikely to come across any Grievers here.

Then again, rationality also dictated that he and his comrades shouldn't be down here in a place like this in the first place, but here they were.

Ryan gritted his teeth, both out of pain and desperation, and leant against the wall of the tunnel to think. He couldn't afford to fall apart. There wouldn't be any sort of phone signal down here - hell, there wasn't even any when they were in the forest above ground - so they couldn't communicate that way. The best option seemed to be to backtrack, find Bailey and Jody, and then they could investigate these tunnels together. Ryan hadn't had the strongest relationship with either of them, but they were better than nothing. He'd appreciate some company when coming face to face with any unsavoury characters, especially with the instability of his heart.

With that, Ryan pulled away from the wall and started to walk back the way he'd come. But his ears picked up a small sound that didn't sound like his shoes crunching on the stones and the brittle train track. As the hairs stood up all over his body, the pain in Ryan's chest began to escalate.

His first instinct was to run like the wind, but his feet refused to move.

Ryan turned on the spot - and what he saw peaked his adrenaline and cortisol levels to the point where he screamed both out of terror and out of the pain that exploded throughout his entire chest.

* * *

"What's taking him so long?" Bailey sighed in exasperation.

"These tunnels were built for trains," Jody stated. "How long do you think it'd take a teenage boy to walk all the way through it and back at walking pace?!"

Before Bailey could formulate a response to that, his attention was captured by a long, shrill sound coming from somewhere far down the tunnel.

A scream.

Ryan's scream.

 **Bit of a shorter chapter this time, hope you like it.**


	4. Classic Conditions

**Warning: This chapter contains copious F-bombs and potential medical inaccuracies. If you are sensitive to the likes of either, discretion is advised. If you want to correct me about the latter, please drop me a review - it will be much appreciated.**

Jody and Bailey sprinted down the tunnel as fast as their legs could carry them. What in the world had happened to Ryan that had caused him to scream so loud that they could hear it from the end of the tunnel?

They kept on running for three minutes until Bailey tripped over a rung in the broken track and fell on his injured hand, causing him to briefly cry out in pain.

Jody stopped. "We need to take care of that wrist, Bailey."

Bailey shook his head. "No, we need to keep going."

"It'll only take a couple of minutes," Jody insisted. "We'll sling it in your jacket for now."

True to Jody's word, it took mere seconds for them to sling Bailey's injured left arm in his jacket, before they got up and dashed on.

They ran until they reached the fork in the track.

"Damn it," Bailey swore. "How are we supposed to know which one he went down?!"

Jody shone her torch around.

"I know."

She pointed the torch beam. There, in the tunnel on the right, was Ryan's green jacket. Torn and slashed, but it was still recognisable as his own.

"Let's go then," Bailey decided.

* * *

Somewhere down the dirty, creepy tunnel, Ryan awoke.

His admittedly rude awakening was caused by being roughly thrown on the ground, causing him to wince as the stone dug into his back.

As that pain subsided, he became aware of the pain in his chest. Strong and pounding, like a bear was constantly stamping on his chest - and clawing his left shoulder and arm. Even with his irregular heartbeat, it seemed to pulse to the rhythm of the words _Angina Pectoris._

His whole body was aching and stinging, but the pain in his chest was by far the worst.

Ryan sat up with some difficulty and tried to take deep breaths, while his hand subconsciously groped around for something to grip on to. In the end, it found the wall, and he pressed hard against it in an attempt to control and alleviate the pain a little.

What had been back there?

Well, part of that question was obvious to him - he wouldn't forget what that ... that _thing_ looked like in a hurry. It had been like a hybrid of a mammal and and insect, and a giant one at that - roughly five feet tall. It had a large, lumpy head with several huge horns sprouting from just above its bulbous eyes. Coarse, grimy hair, about an inch or two in length, and its body was covered in it, including its limbs (Ryan knew this because the creature had struck him with one of these limbs, knocking him out - presumably so he could be carried away without protest). Those limbs ... they were long and thin like spiders' legs, and yet impossibly strong. It surely had enough strength to crush Ryan like a worm - he didn't know why it hadn't.

That begged the question - _why_ hadn't it? Could it be planning to eat him later, or to give him to its young? But Ryan didn't see how it or any young it might have could survive for long without food - how often did people get down here?

Here he was, asking questions he was pretty sure he didn't want to know the answers to. He should probably focus on escaping and finding Bailey and Jody.

Ryan felt for any pain in his body. His chest was still throbbing persistently, but it was tolerable for now. He stood up, trying to make as little noise as possible - and something fell off his leg. Feeling for it, he realised it was his phone. But he would've dropped it when that creature knocked him out - why was it here? Had the creature gotten it back to him? The question was too complicated to answer, and anyway, he didn't try to - he had bigger fish to fry.

He made to turn on the torch, but then stopped. If he turned it on, he realised, he would be spotted easily by the creature that had caught him, or any other creatures that may be down here. But it was almost pitch black in the cold, dank chamber - he had to get out without inflicting any more pain on himself than he was already feeling at that moment no thanks to his goddamn heart condition. So he placed his hand over the lightbulb to prevent most of light from shining too brightly, and turned the torch on.

To his relief, he seemed to be alone. Taking his hand away, his shone the torch around to get a better look.

He was in a small rocky cavern, only about two metres by two metres. Nothing else conspicuous was in there but him, except for the fact that he realised his jacket was gone.

That explained why it felt colder in here than it had felt in the main tunnel.

Or maybe it was just the chills traveling down his spine in fear.

Either way, he needed to get out of here.

He noticed the tunnel at the side of the cavern. It was smaller and narrower than the main tunnel, but he got through it without a problem.

The only question now was how to get back to Bailey and Jody without getting recaptured by the creature!

* * *

"Jody, I think this is a bad idea," muttered Bailey, as he and Jody was still trooping down the tunnel.

"You got a better one?" Jody hissed.

"Yeah - turn around and run back the other way!"

"And leave Ryan?"

"He's probably dead by now anyway."

"We don't know that!" Jody retorted.

"How do you explain those then?" Bailey raised his eyebrows and pointed to the tunnel wall.

Jody followed his finger. Sure enough, there were four long grooves in the tunnel wall, as though it had been scraped down by long, hard claws or horns as easily as ordinary fingernails on a chalkboard.

She shuddered, before gritting her teeth. "I'm gonna find Ryan. If he's alive, he won't be able to get out without us."

"And if he's dead?" Bailey inquired.

"We'll bring back the body," Jody resolved.

" _You'll_ bring back the body," Bailey corrected, wrinkling his nose. "I can't carry much with one arm."

Jody rolled her eyes and pressed on.

* * *

Meanwhile, Ryan was trying hard to focus his mind on meeting his comrades as opposed to being spotted by the creature. His heart wasn't thanking him for his current situation as it was - he couldn't afford to think negative now.

How long was this tunnel anyway? He knew that the tunnels had originally been designed for trains, and he didn't know how long it had taken for the creature to carry him from the tunnel fork to the dead end, but he had been walking for a good half hour now, he had to be nearing the end soon.

Ryan shone his torch directly down the tunnel. There was no end within range, and yet, Ryan wanted to run.

Run away from that creepy cavern, run towards Bailey and Jody, run towards safety above ground, run away from this big pile of utter shit they were in, just run!

And yet, he couldn't run.

All because of his goddamn heart condition.

And not for the first time, Ryan outwardly cursed the fact that he was born with it.

"Stupid fucking heart condition, stupid fucking mother, stupid fucking alcoholism, stupid fucking ..."

* * *

"Stupid fucking bitch of a mother, stupid fucking ... why the fuck did she have to fucking drink while she was fucking pregnant with me?!"

"Is that Ryan?" Jody asked, hearing his mantra of profanity.

"No, it's Pope Francis!" Bailey replied sarcastically.

Jody gave him a harsh look.

"Ryan, language!" she called, her voice echoing off the walls.

"Jody?!" came Ryan's voice. "Oh good, you're here to berate me for swearing when I have every right to swear!"

Jody groaned. "Just come on, run down to meet us and tell us what happened!"

But how could Ryan explain to her that he couldn't run? Well, not without the risk of a literal heart attack.

"I'll be quick," he said back, lying through his teeth - a tactic he was used to.

For him, lying was as easy as winking.

Ryan gritted his teeth and picked up his pace ever so slightly, taking care not to go too fast as the pain in his chest threatened to escalate.

That was how they remained for the next five minutes, until-

"Ryan!" Jody dropped her phone torch, ran up to Ryan and hugged him unexpectedly. "What _happened_ over there?!"

Ryan winced very hard from the pain caused by her hug and had to push her away. Jody picked up her torch so she could see him better.

He looked startlingly similar from when he'd had his panic attack just a couple of hours earlier - sweaty face, eerie pallor, even his posture looking like he was struggling to stay upright. The major difference was that while having his panic attack, his facial expression was one of gasping for breath, while now, his face was tightened in pain, teeth gritted, a hand pressed against his heart.

"Don't tell me he's having a panic attack again," Bailey sighed in exasperation.

"Bailey!" Jody growled, before turning back to the pained Scouse boy in front of them. "Ryan? Oh God, are you injured?!"

The boy was unable to respond - he thought that he would let out an ear-piercing scream if he opened his mouth, like when he'd been kidnapped by the creature, and probably alert said creature as to his location. He just leaned on the wall and squeezed his eyes shut in pain.

"Just breathe," Jody said, walking over to him (and getting deja vu).

The pain wave passed, leaving Ryan in, again, a pretty much identical state to after his panic attack - sitting on the ground, slumped against the wall, sweaty, exhausted, his breathing ragged and his face as pale as the moon in the torch light.

"Are you injured?" Jody repeated worriedly.

Ryan shook his head stiffly in response.

Jody gritted her teeth. "That's the second time something like this has happened, Ryan. What's going on?"

Ryan acted like he was still catching his breath, trying to postpone having to admit that his two attacks on the same day were, in fact, two entirely different attacks with two entirely different reasons. It was humiliating, and it would make him seem weak, which was the last thing they needed at that moment.

"It doesn't matter," he said lamely in the end, though most of him knew it wouldn't work. "Let's keep going, we need to find a way out."

Sure enough, it didn't work.

"We can't find a way out if you're having these attacks so often," Jody said. "We're not going anywhere until you tell us, Ryan. We need to know, both about these attacks and what happened after you went off on your own, and if we have to stay here all day waiting for you to provide an answer, so be it."

She spoke in a tone of firm finality. Ryan knew he was cornered, and yet it took him rather a while to give in.

"Ryan?" Jody coaxed. "We're waiting."

"Fine, Ryan sighed. "I went off down the tunnel, alone, until I reached a fork in the track. I didn't know which to go down, so I decided to backtrack and find you guys. But then I heard a noise behind me, and when I turned around, I just saw this big, black ... _thing_ following me. That's why I screamed, and then it hit me and knocked me out."

"So how'd you get back here?" Bailey questioned.

"After it knocked me out, I think it carried me away to a dead end of the tunnel, and I woke up when it threw me on the ground. Then I got up and followed the tunnel back until I found you guys," Ryan explained, deliberately omitting details of the pain in his chest no thanks to his heart condition. "Wait, how did you two know which tunnel to go down?"

Jody picked up his torn green jacket, which she'd draped over her arm and carried with her ever since she'd come across it, and handed it back to him. "We found this in one of the tunnels."

Ryan winced slightly at the long slashes that had almost ripped the jacket in two, but he slipped it back on anyway. "Thanks."

"Did you get a look at this thing?" Bailey asked him.

Ryan nodded. "Yeah. Five feet tall, looked like a hybrid between an insect and a mammal, hairy, horns, long thin limbs, strong. Oh, and scary."

Jody shuddered.

"Now tell us about your little 'episodes'," Bailey said, a hint of mocking in his tone.

"Why should I?" Ryan retorted, trying not to wince at the ache that had returned.

"Don't try to weasel your way out of it, Ryan!" Jody hissed. "We want answers, and I've already said that we're not going anywhere until you give them to us!"

There was no way out for Ryan now, and with a reluctant wrench, he resigned himself to his fate.

"Okay ... the first one, back there, that was a panic attack, because ... I remembered what Mike said, about the people who ended up down here. How some never return, some lose body parts, some become physically and mentally disabled, and some get Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder." Ryan paused to breathe - with his heart and emotional instability, he had to be very careful. "What if that happens to us?"

"If some people do come back, then there has to be a way out, side effects or not," Jody reasoned, "and Mike will help us deal with any side effects we sustain."

"Though it looks like you have your own ways of dealing with it, Ryan."

Ryan and Jody frowned at Bailey, until he produced from his pocket ... Ryan's anxiety medication.

They must've fallen out of his jacket pocket.

"Let's see if I can read this," Bailey murmured, squinting at the label on the outside and reading rather slowly. " _For Ryan Reeves, take one tablet by mouth three times a day, Ben ... Ben-zo-"_

Ryan stood up sharply and snatched the pill box back. "Give that to me, it's none of your business!" he spat, the sharp throb returning to his chest.

"Ryan!" Jody took the box and read the label herself, her eyes widening as she read the diagnosis. "You have ..."

Ryan sighed, took the pills and slumped back against the wall. "Yep. I have an anxiety disorder of my very own. Now you know."

A silence. Surprisingly brief, only a few seconds.

"What happened back just now, when I hugged you, was that another panic attack?" Jody questioned fearfully, suddenly feeling absolutely terrible at the prospect of having caused such an attack in another human being.

She was both surprised and relieved when Ryan shook his head. "No, it wasn't."

"What was it then?" Bailey sneered.

"Shut up," Jody muttered.

Ryan ran his shaking fingers through his tousled hair. "I ... when my mum was pregnant with me, she found it so stressful that she decided to drink alcohol."

"We know that," Jody said. "We heard you swearing about it."

Ryan chose not to respond to that remark. "As a result, I was born with Angina-"

He was cut of by Bailey's attempt to contain his laughter at the word 'Angina', causing him to roll his eyes. "I was born with Angina Pectoris, a heart condition."

His companions didn't outwardly react to that, so he went on, adopting a robotic tone similar to a commentator in a documentary on the subject, "This means I am blessed with irregular heartbeat, sharp chest pains whenever I over-exert myself, and the prospect of a full-blown, potentially fatal heart attack constantly hanging over my head whenever I release too much adrenaline. Before you ask, yes, I have to take meds for that too. Only, unlike my benzos, I didn't bring them with me."

Silence, for a good thirty seconds. Though nothing was happening, Ryan's heart was beating painfully fast.

"Why did you never tell us?" Bailey asked in the end.

"Why do you think?!" Ryan spat.

"We should've known earlier, Ryan. This is important!" Jody insisted.

"Well it's not like it's gonna change anything," Ryan sighed, worn out from the happenings of that day. "I have both a mental disorder and a heart problem. Big whoop. It's not gonna help whether you knew or not."

"It _is_ important that we know, Ryan. What if something happened to you, and we were in a really bad situation. Like now, for example. We wouldn't know how to help you!" Jody ranted, but she wasn't finished. "A-And, we need to know our boundaries, what we can and can't do. If you're keeping things from us, we might end up getting killed!"

Ryan blinked sharply, her words striking a chord within him. He tried his hardest to ignore the particularly sharp pulse through his chest.

Jody stuck her chin up, showing she wasn't the slightest bit apologetic or ashamed for knocking some sense into her stubborn comrade. "Now, is there anything else we need to know, or are you feeling up to carrying on now?"

"There's nothing else," Ryan insisted, meeting her eyes almost pleadingly, "but I can't go very fast right now."

"We need to move on though," Bailey chimed in. "What if that creature you saw comes and finds us?"

"Two minutes, nothing more," Ryan said.

Bailey sighed, and checked his watch. "Clock's ticking."


	5. Things That Go Clack in the Dark

"So, did you see any other sign of this person who you thought you saw?" Bailey asked, once Ryan had recovered slightly.

"No," Ryan sighed. "Just that creepy creature."

"Wait," Jody realised. "Didn't you say you came from a dead end?"

"Yeah, that's where I was dumped," Ryan confirmed. "Guys, I think we need to turn back, go down the other tunnel in that fork. This one is a dead end, and I'm willing to bet I was dumped because that thing is gonna come back for me later."

"What if that creature finds us on the way?" Jody asked.

"We need to figure out a name for this creature," Bailey suggested. "Griever?"

"No, this isn't The Maze Runner," Ryan sighed, slightly irritably. "Horny bastard?"

Bailey sniggered.

"Ryan!" Jody scolded, hitting him on the shoulder, causing him to wince as that shoulder was still aching thanks to his angina attack. "Sorry, only we're not calling them that!"

"Why not? It has horns, and it's a bastard," Ryan said.

"How about a horned trapper, then?" Jody suggested.

The boys shrugged, and Bailey's watched beeped.

"Times up, horned trapper it is," Bailey said. "Come on, get up."

Ryan picked himself up with some help from the wall and they slunk back down the tunnel towards the fork.

"Seriously though, what if we come across that horned trapper?" Jody hissed.

"Run the other way?" Bailey asked.

"No, it's a dead end," Ryan reminded them. "Listen, I know what it sounds like. If we hear it, then we go very slowly and see if we can avoid it."

"What does it sound like?" Bailey asked.

"I heard it moving - it's like clacking," Ryan described.

"Did it make any other noise?" Jody asked.

"Might have, but I didn't hear it, I screamed too loud," Ryan admitted.

Bailey snorted in amusement, causing Ryan to glare at him.

* * *

They reached the fork eventually, guided by Jody's phone torch, before Ryan froze and put his arm out in front of his comrades.

"The horned trapper," he explained. "I heard it."

All three of them remained motionless and silent, before they heard the creepy _clack-clack-clack_ of the horned trapper's legs on the ground, causing Bailey to shudder unwittingly.

"What do we do now?!" Jody asked, speaking so low under her breath she was mouthing more than anything.

"Turn that torch off," Ryan whispered back. "We don't want it to see us."

Jody complied, and they all pressed against the tunnel wall, every hair and nerve on edge, their ears pricked up like wolves. Then, they heard a voice softly crooning to the horned trapper. A voice that somehow made their blood run cold.

"My little minion, you have found something? What is it?"

The voice was monotone, robotic, as if operating on autopilot, and listening to it, the children couldn't tell if it was male or female. Low and gravelly, almost grating around the edges, and it had much the same effect on the senses as the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard.

The horned trapper responded with an odd series of grunts and clacks of its feet. It must have made sense to the owner of the voice though, as they replied, "Human life? And so young? Why my minion, how wonderful! But what did you do?"

More grunts and clacks, but the first response this time came not from the voice, but from a series of excited barks from a dog - causing Ryan to have to grip onto Bailey's shoulder very hard in order to stop his legs from giving out.

Bailey shot Ryan a harsh look but both remained silent as the owner of the voice responded. "And you gave it its device?! And just neglected it?! Don't you realise it could've escaped with that device, you filthy furball!"

The horned trapper gave a long, indignant screech and thump-clacked the ground, the sounds and impact vibrating through the tunnel.

The owner of the voice seemed unfazed, however. "You wanted to find out what that thing did?! Well, that life probably had that thing for a reason! That never crossed your mind, did it! Oh, come on, we need to get the whole squad on this if we want to catch that life. Who knows where it's gotten to by now!"

As they started to move, Bailey, who was closest to the junction of the fork, took that moment to shuffle as noiselessly as possible to get a closer look. He flinched at the sight of the horned trapper, but as the clacks and footsteps started to fade, he shuffled back to them.

"We can't go down the other tunnel, that's where they're going," he reported.

"Who was talking back there?" Jody asked.

"It was a person," Bailey said. "It might've been the same one you saw back there, Ryan. "

"Male or female?" Jody asked.

"Male, I think," Bailey replied. "But it was really dark, I couldn't see very well."

"What do we do now?" Jody asked.

She and Bailey found themselves both looking to Ryan.

The boy frowned, muttering, "We can't go down the main tunnel, that leads nowhere, and we can't go back down this one ..." he trailed off, realising something. "Guys, we might have to follow them."

"Are you crazy?!" Bailey hissed. "Who knows where they're going down there! We can't go up against any more of those things!"

Jody frowned. "Unfortunately Bailey, he's right."

Bailey nearly choked on the air, which wasn't difficult as the air in the tunnel was so stale.

"There's a way out of here, and it's not down any other way," Jody explained. "If we stay here, avoiding those things forever, we'll die down here!"

"Exactly," Ryan murmured. "We'll just be super quiet, okay?"

"Even if it means going up against those dogs?" Bailey sneered, unable to resist the opportunity.

"There's a time and a place, Bailey," Jody sighed. "Look, following them is the only chance we have of getting out of here, so stop moaning and let's get it over with."

Without another word, she started making her way ahead of the two boys, who followed suit, Bailey doing so with some reluctance. They travelled much slower than previously because none of them dared to turn on a torch.

* * *

Eventually, they reached a clearing that was situated by one side of the tunnel, resembling the station platform they had come across hours earlier when Ryan had sighted a person. Or rather, they reached a spot a few feet away from the platform, as they didn't dare go in.

The platform was more well-lit than the rest of the tunnel, which aided them in seeing that it was _infested_ with horned trappers. Scuttling around like spiders in a communal web, some had luminous bulbs hanging down from their heads like that of anglerfish. The sound of their legs clacking on the stone was deafening - it made them question how they hadn't heard it earlier!

"There." Bailey nodded to a spot in the crowd. "That's the guy we heard earlier."

In the eerie light, it was easier to see that the guard had a male face, and had a large dog at his side. It was hard to tell the breed of dog as it was skittish on its leash and kept turning around and around and side to side, so it was virtually impossible to decipher its breed.

The horned trappers paid no heed to the guard and dog as they made their way through the colony, but when they climbed up onto a raised area, all clacking of feet died down and the trappers all turned to face him.

"Arachniwraiths, pay attention!" bellowed the guard, his voice scraping almost hoarsely around the edges, "There is a life down here in these tunnels. Sniff it out and bring it here to be harvested!"

The children froze - they could only see one way out of the horned trappers' - or arachniwraiths' as they seemed to be called - lair, and they were standing right in it!

"What do we do?!" Jody wheezed.

"Run!" Ryan replied.

They made a bolt for it, eventually making it back to the junction in the tunnel fork, though the creatures weren't far behind. They ran a little way into the other tunnel, pressing up against the wall, none of them daring to breathe.

They were trapped.


	6. Scents and Severe Situations

**Special thanks to CatsAndWhiskers for not only leaving a lovely review last chapter, but also for the shoutout and promo in your story Land's End. Go give that story a read and review you guys, as well as her multi-chapter story Echo, she's great!**

 **I'll also give thanks to Randomguest 815, because your review of the last chapter brought up a point I hadn't thought of myself, and thus inspired the vast majority of this one.  
**

 **And of course, Dark Heart 945, who has been a positive saint and helped me a lot with this chapter, so thanks a million.**

The Arachniwraiths were scuttling nearer. The children broke into another run. The entire time, their minds kept flashing back to them. Each time that happened, they felt like they could hear them scuttling closer, and closer.

After about a minute or two, they slowed their pace. Running wasn't going to do much, now. They needed to find a hiding place, somewhere.

"We can't run forever," Jody panted, her arms flopping down by her sides.

"You're telling me," Ryan wheezed, his hands on his knees in an effort to support himself.

Bailey was fitter than the other two because of all his football, so he was the only one not worse for wear, in spite of his injured hand.

"Can we just talk about why there was a weird guard, talking to a bunch of spiders?" asked Bailey. "I mean, are we not going to talk about it?"

His two partners gave him icy stares. Their looks gave him his answer.

"Guess not, then."

 _Clack-clack-clack._

"Move it!" Jody urged, as she looked over her shoulder to see if the arachniwraiths were within sight.

Luckily, they weren't.

They began moving forward, again. The three of them searched for any sort of difference within the tunnel - anything that may buy them some time.

"What, now? There must be some way out!" Bailey panicked.

"To get to it, we'll have to go to where that guard was," Ryan realised, "and we're gonna run across those arach- arachni- can't we just call them horned trappers?"

"Call them whatever, I think their proper name is the least of our worries," Jody sighed.

Ryan started again. "To find a way out, we'll have to go where the guard was, and we're gonna run into those horned trappers along the way ..." Ryan trailed off, his eyes widening his realisation. "Guys, I have a plan."

"Good, what is it?" Bailey asked.

"I just remembered, the guard and the trappers only know that _I'm_ down here, and not you two," Ryan started. "They only have my scent. So here's the plan - I go find them, lure them away with my scent, and you guys can find a way to get past the guard, and find a way out."

His comrades didn't react at first, they just stood there with unreadable expressions on their faces. Then Bailey said, very slowly, "If you didn't have a dodgy heart, Ryan, I would hit you right now."

The boy frowned. Bailey continued: "Seriously, I don't care what conditions you have, there is no excuse for thinking as stupidly as you did. For one, with your heart condition, there is no way you could distract those things long enough for us to escape. Also, how are we supposed to get past the guards? Finally, and most obviously, why oh why would you give yourself up to those oversized bugs?! You do realise that you'll be 'harvested', whatever that is, and I doubt that any of us want to know what that is. Ryan, you are NOT going to go after those things."

After Bailey had finished, he looked at his comrades' facial expressions. Ryan seemed more surprised at his rant than wounded, like he'd been when Jody had knocked some sense into him about keeping quiet about his medical conditions.

Jody herself, on the other hand, was trying to contain a smile.

Ryan sighed. "Alright, we'll think of a plan B, but time is of the essence. We can only keep evading the trappers for so long. Also, if we can't think of a plan B, we're going with plan A."

He gave Bailey a pointed look that said, _No matter what some people seem to think._

"Are you sure there was nothing else at that dead end - _this_ dead end?" Jody asked him.

"I know so," Ryan replied. "There's nothing there that'll help us."

"What about the way we fell in?" Bailey suggested. "There might be something there."

"The only thing over there is the tunnel that got us into this mess," Ryan replied.

"Are you sure?" Jody asked. "I mean, to everyone still up there, we've disappeared. Tyler knows where we've gone, he'd tell them. They have to have come looking for us. Wouldn't they find the pit?"

"They'd have to lean against that tree for it to open," Bailey pointed out. "Anyway, even if they did somehow manage to find the pit, what then? They'd fall down here and get into the same mess we're in now."

 _Clack-clack-clack._

The children were bolt upright and alert at this.

"We don't have much time, _think!"_ Jody urged.

 _Clack-clack-clack._

"There's no time!" Ryan growled. "I have to get over there!"

"What?! Ryan no!" Jody yelled.

 _Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack._

"It's the only way!" Ryan retorted. "I'll lure them away, you stay here. Only move when you can't hear them!"

With that, Ryan bolted down the tunnel towards the arachniwraiths.

"Flipping idiot!" Jody swore, stamping her foot on the track.

* * *

The ominous clacking only got louder and faster as Ryan moved closer, his chest tight, his unstable heart pulsing.

He caught sight of the glow from the arachniwraiths' bulbs, and had to lean on the wall.

The clacking slowed down, and was replaced by odd snorting sounds. Clearly the creatures were trying to sniff him out.

Finally, he saw a few arachniwraiths scuttling into view. The sight of them in the light made his skin crawl with fear and a hint of disgust. Briefly forgetting that he was trying to catch their attention, he pressed up against the wall and froze to it as the two 'wraiths at the front, one of which had a bulb hanging from its head, clacked forward and sniffed some more. From this angle and in the light, Ryan could see that their eyes were a clouded, very pale army green. They were blind, or had very poor eyesight, and were both sniffing around for him.

The one without the bulb suddenly stiffened, before standing straighter and sniffing more frantically. Ryan knew it had detected him. Now the others behind them were sniffing too. He shuffled along the wall, every nerve in his body on edge, to see if the arachniwraiths were following his scent. Judging by how he had to narrowly miss their horns as their heads swayed around, he was right, and shuffled faster until he passed the last in the group that was following him.

Then he ran.

Almost immediately, he heard the arachniwraiths clack after him. He knew there was only so far he could go before he had an angina attack, but he didn't dare stop running. He ran until he reached the tunnel junction and ran back up the other way - towards the lair and the guard and the dog.

* * *

"Well, well, well!" gloated the guard, standing with two other guards and dogs. "The human life decided to come straight to us!"

Ryan was standing in front of them on the platform, the colony of arachniwraiths behind him, listening to what they were saying about them. He tried to listen to them intently too, but most of his concentration and energy was going into staying standing up straight, as his heart was making that quite a task at the current moment.

"When will it be ready for harvesting?" asked another one of the guards.

"Not quite ready yet," said the first one, who was standing not only with a dog, but with the same arachniwraith Ryan, Bailey and Jody had heard him talking to prior - his 'little minion.'

* * *

Jody and Bailey heard the clacks of the arachniwraiths' footsteps fading away.

"I really don't like this," Jody muttered, her teeth gritted.

"Neither do I," Bailey admitted. "But we have to do something. We can't let Ryan have risked his life for no reason."

Jody sighed, seeing his point. "Fine."

With that, they made their way towards the guards, hoping to find a way out.

But what they found instead was the lair full of arachniwraiths again, all watching the guards gloat about catching Ryan.

"We have to get him away from there!" Jody hissed, shoving her phone deep in her pocket. "I don't want them to harvest him!"

"And I don't want to be seen by those horned trappers!" Bailey protested. "They don't know we're here, remember?!"

"The only way out is through here!" Jody insisted. "I'm going in, and keep quiet!"

As the guards kept talking, Jody and Bailey had to creep around the platform lair, keeping to the wall but still having to narrowly avoid legs and horns. As soon as they reached the front of the colony, they froze, pondering on what to do next.

The throb in Ryan's chest was increasing exponentially, and the irregularity of his heartbeat was somehow making it worse. Standing up suddenly seemed the most difficult thing in the world. He could hear his heart pounding like a glitchy toy drummer, so much so that he couldn't even hear the guards' words anymore. All he wanted was to lie down, take a break, he wasn't ready to deal with this situation. He just wanted to lie down and sleep. He just wanted to sleep.

He'd tried his hardest to shift his concentration away from his chest pain and towards keeping himself standing, but it was hard ... so hard ... it wasn't worth trying.

He couldn't stand up. He collapsed to his knees.

He couldn't ...

* * *

"What the- what have you filthy furballs done to it?!" one of the guards demanded to know as he saw the young boy pass out without warning in front of him.

There was a roar of outrage from the arachniwraiths, as well as a lot of indignant stamping, and amidst the commotion, Jody took that moment to run out from her hiding place, grab Ryan and half-drag half-carry him away from the guards.

"His heart is giving out on him," she explained hurriedly to Bailey. "C'mon, run!"

"Arachniwraiths, get them!"

That was the last thing they heard.

 **Sorry if this seems a bit sloppy, I was writing it in a rush you see.**


	7. Bonding Behind Bars

**Let me quickly tell you the story of how this chapter came to be.**

 **I planned to have this be just a small little bit added on to the next chapter, so that the ending of the last chapter would make no sense. But as I was planning it, that little bit kept expanding in my mind until it was enough for it to be a chapter of its own. It's kinda filler-y and more talk than action, but this is meant to be more of a bonus chapter because you guys are awesome, which is why I'm not publishing it on Sunday, my usual publishing day.**

 **You may notice that throughout this story, I strictly refer to the relationships between the main three as 'comrades' rather than friends. Not because I'm a Bolshevik sympathiser, but simply because our main three aren't what you would call 'friends' with one another. This chapter is where that changes.**

 **Anyway, enough of my ramblings, enjoy.**

Jody awoke first.

It was pitch black, like it had been when they'd fallen down the pit, like it had been when she'd briefly woken in the night in her tent.

Maybe it all hadn't happened. Maybe Mike's story and the boys' plans to check out the pit had simply triggered a very vivid and bizarre dream. Still, she'd have to tell them that it wasn't a good idea. Better safe than sorry, as Tyler had said.

She rubbed her eyes, which felt all grainy from sleep dust, and pushed herself up.

The surface under her hands wasn't soft like her sleeping bag. It was hard and grimy like stone.

Damn it, it wasn't a dream. It had been real, all of it. The fall, the arachniwraiths, Ryan's anxiety and heart condition, the guards ...

The thought of the latter woke her up properly, and caused the rest of the memories to flow back to her. How Ryan's heart had caused him to pass out, and how the guards had ordered the arachniwraiths to catch all of them as she'd tried to help.

So where was she now? She still couldn't see anything. Was it because she'd been harvested? Jody attempted to feel her body to see if she still had it - and felt her phone still in her pocket!

She breathed a sigh of relief, before taking the phone out and managing to turn the torch on. She could feel that the screen was smashed and the phone dented, but the torch still worked, and that was all that mattered now. Shining it around, she got a good look at her current situation.

Jody saw that she was in what appeared to be a cell, roughly the size of a small cloakroom. There was a trapdoor in one wall, but it appeared to be locked. But most importantly, she could see that the two boys had been thrown in with her. Bailey was lying slightly twisted on the floor of the cell, obviously unconscious, but otherwise seemingly okay and snoring.

Ryan on the other hand (no pun intended) looked ... well ... awful.

Jody knew that he'd be worse for wear after his severe angina attack, but at that moment, she was terrified that the boy was on his deathbed. His face was more than pale - it was ashen, and contained substantial hints of pain around the edges. He was sweating dramatically, yet slight shivers wracked through his slender frame. His breathing was irregular, wincing every 30 seconds or so, and she instinctively reached out to feel for a pulse in his neck, noting that his sweat was cold.

It was there, only it was a strained flutter, and very inconsistent. However, her probing had woken him up, and by the time she noticed, he was looking at her through glazed, bleary eyes. His pupils were dilated.

"C-can you hear me?" Jody stuttered, not knowing what else to say. "Nod if you can hear me."

Ryan frowned slightly at that, but nodded.

"How does your heart feel?" Jody asked.

Ryan winced. "It hurts. Bad."

Jody bit her lip in worry. Her comrade was clearly unwell, and she felt she had to alleviate his pain in some way. She'd briefly heard of Angina Pectoris in her first aid sessions during her last school year, and she tried to remember what the teacher had said.

GET HELP had been the priority, but that wasn't an option now, not until they found a way out.

What else? Ah yes, sit the person up and support their back.

"Try and sit up," she told Ryan.

"Why?"

"It'll help you breathe better."

With some help from Jody, Ryan pushed himself up into a sitting position, his back leaning against the wall, Jody removing his jacket in the process as it was starting to stick to his moist skin.

"Better?"

Ryan nodded, just a little. "Thanks Jodes."

Jody looked surprised at the nickname, but said, "No problem."

They sat in silence for some time, Ryan trying to breathe slowly and calmly and Jody ready to come to his aid should the time call for it.

"God, I'm so thirsty," Ryan said suddenly, wiping some sweat from his forehead.

Jody kicked herself. Of course Ryan would be thirsty - he was losing a lot of moisture from sweating. But none of them had any drink with them. She wondered if there would be any down here, for the dogs at least if not for the guards and arachniwraiths too, but she was dubious about them if they were there - and besides, they had no way of getting to them.

"Sorry," she apologised, "but you'll just have to bare it for now."

Ryan let out a breath. "Look like we'll die of starvation, that is if we're not harvested by those mutant spiders."

It was the first time any of them had fully addressed the very real possibility of them dying down there, and it made Jody feel like she'd been punched in the gut - literally, as she'd only just realised how hungry she was now too.

She wanted to tell him to not think about that, to think positive, that they would escape, but what came out instead surprised her.

"I remember when I was back at home, my family would sometimes leave me home alone with not much food in the house," she recounted. "I got so hungry that I had to resort to eating dog food."

Ryan blinked and sat up straighter. "What?"

He knew most of the details of Jody's life before she went into care thanks to reading her file, but this was new.

"I had to," Jody defended.

Ryan shuddered, feeling his throat sting with stomach acid at the thought. "That's horrible."

Jody shrugged. "That's my family for you - only you already know that," she said, giving him a pointed look.

Ryan flinched. "I-I'm sorry, I just-"

"Save it," Jody sighed. "What's done is done."

She absentmindedly rubbed her side. Ryan noticed.

"Did they hurt you?" he asked. "The horned trappers?"

Jody shook her head darkly. "Not the horned trappers."

She lifted her top slightly to reveal her side. There was a long, jagged discolouration marring her skin.

Ryan's eyes widened. "What happened?!" he wheezed in shock.

"Kingsley," Jody said. "I was 6 at the time, and I wanted to go out somewhere. Only, Kingsley was in a bad mood - well, a worse mood than usual - and I kept pestering him, so he got out a knife and ..." Jody paused when her breath caught in her throat.

"Oh God," Ryan breathed, his eyes popping. "That's- that's so _horrible,_ I'm so sorry. _"_

"Mum couldn't say anything at the hospital, otherwise Kingsley would've hurt her too," Jody continued sadly.

Ryan bit his lip in sympathy. "Wish my mother had the same decency."

"I wouldn't call it decency," Bailey's voice said suddenly.

They hadn't realised he'd been listening in.

"From the sound of it, it sounds more like cowardice," he commented.

"How much of that did you hear?" Jody asked.

"All of it," Bailey replied.

Jody sighed, burying her face in her hands, as Ryan glared at Bailey.

The boy quickly rectified his mistake. "Don't worry, I-I don't think anything less of you, only your mum and brother."

Jody took her hands away and smiled slightly.

"Guys," Ryan said suddenly, "I've been meaning to ask this for a while, but ... if it wasn't Mike, who told you about Chloe?"

Jody and Bailey frowned and glanced at each other, as if silently debating on whether to rat out the culprits.

Neither of them were for tattling, but what Tee and Sasha had done was really overstepping the line - Ryan had a right to know after what he'd gone through as a result.

"It was Tee and Sasha," Bailey replied.

Ryan rolled his eyes with a sigh. "Why am I not surprised? I guess I can't really expect much else of two people who think that 'psycho' is an acceptable term."

"We didn't think they were eavesdropping," Jody explained. "We just thought they were saying you were dangerous because they're always saying things like that about you. We thought they were just doing it again while you were-"

"Jody," Bailey interrupted. "I suggest you stop talking."

He indicated to Ryan, who was starting to shake violently and the colour in his face was draining away. She didn't know whether he was going to have a panic attack or an angina attack, but she didn't care - she only knew that one would aggravate the other, and had to be stopped.

"It's alright," she said quickly. "I'm sorry Ryan."

The boy calmed slightly, but started speaking, though more to himself than to the others. "Psycho ... I won't sugar coat this ... it's a slur. An insult ... no one half decent would use that to refer to someone ... wow, Tee and Sasha aren't decent, why am I not surprised?!" He let out a mirthless laugh.

"Ryan!" Jody urged, taking his shaking hands. "You're right, they were wrong to call you that, but it's in the past now. No one's calling you a psycho."

The boy calmed down after only a few minutes, and wiped a few tears from his eyes.

"Come here," Jody offered - before surprising both boys by hugging Ryan.

Ryan tensed up slightly in surprise, but soon started hugging her back.

"There's room for one more," Jody teased Bailey.

Bailey could only hug one-armed, but they appreciated his contribution to the group hug nonetheless.

"We're gonna make it out of here," he whispered to them. "I know it."

"Yeah," Jody agreed, feeling positive also. "But I'm kinda tired now. We should rest, it's ..." she checked her phone, " ... 9:40 p.m."

"Night guys," Ryan said, lying back and using his torn jacket as a pillow, his cardiac instability exhausting him.

At least their bad situation had produced something good, as from that moment, the three children weren't just comrades. They had become friends. There are some things you just can't share without liking each other, and confiding in one another after saving each other from ghostly guards, creepy creatures and emotional disasters was one of them.

 **So this ended up a little sappier than I intended, but I think we and they deserve a reprieve after all the crap they've been through a̶n̶d̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶g̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶.**


	8. Down Among the Fearful

**Here it is folks - where it all started.**

 **This was the first chapter of The Flood I ever started writing, at least 9 months ago. I had a burst of inspiration one day and wrote the first two paragraphs. I didn't even know the context it would be for - it kept changing and evolving, and this little chapter kept changing and growing along with it. I kept proofreading it and making changes, with is why it's a little more purple prose than my other chapters as I had more time to embellish it.**

 **The title of this chapter is taken from an episode of the detective crime drama Lewis.**

The guards' dogs barked from what seemed like miles away. Ryan's eyes snapped open. The barks got louder. He shifted uncomfortably, the sounds reminding him unpleasantly of Mischief. He knew that his fear of dogs was irrational, but the incident with his old neighbour's dog stuck out too much in his mind. The sounds of the guards shushing the dogs did little to soothe his anxiety - he knew that his unstable heart would soon kick into agonizing overdrive if he didn't do something about it fast.

His joints felt stiff as steel due to his inadvisable sleeping position (it's hard to sleep comfortably when you're trapped in a cell scarcely bigger than a wardrobe with two other people), but he still managed to reach over and grab onto Bailey's non-injured hand, praying that the action wouldn't wake him up.

It did.

"Ryan?" inquired Bailey.

Ryan gasped briefly and let go of Bailey's hand. "What?"

"Did you just grab my hand?"

"What, no!"

"Don't play dumb, I definitely felt something!"

"Well maybe you were dreaming!"

Jody groaned beside them, waking up. "Whass-goin'-on?" she slurred.

"Nothing Jody," said Ryan, before Bailey could utter a word. "Just go back to sleep yeah?"

"Well I can't now, can I? You two are talking so loud a deaf person couldn't sleep!" Jody retorted. "I'm surprised those guards haven't heard us by now. Do you want to be harvested?"

The mention of the guards reminded Ryan of what had woken him up in the first place. "Yeah, about that ..." he was debating over whether to utter his next sentence, but figured he had nothing to lose anyway, "the guards are nearby, and they have their dogs with them."

"Oh, is that what it's all about?" sneered Bailey. "You're scared of the little dogs?"

Ryan shifted, a vexed expression on his face. "They're not _little._ I've seen them - they're bigger than Harry! And they're rabid - I saw them foaming at the mouth!"

"Why are you scared of dogs anyway?" Jody asked him. "I mean, they're sweet and intelligent and loyal and-"

"Shut up!" Ryan interrupted.

His sudden outburst certainly did the job - Jody and Bailey were both stunned into silence. It stunned Ryan too - he rarely raised his voice, let alone shouted. He recoiled back into himself, wincing slightly as the dull throb in his chest that had returned and was now threatening to escalate reminded him why.

For a while they were silent, the only sound perceptible in the tiny cell being Ryan's slightly ragged breathing. Just then, they heard the sound of heavy boots on the cold stone floor - as well as the clacking of a certain arachniwraith.

"It's the guards!" whispered Jody.

"Pretend to be asleep," said Bailey. They did, just as they heard the tiny door creak open and felt the cooler air rushing in. They heard the dogs breathing as they and the guards looked in on the terrified children.

"Still asleep, damn it," growled one of the guards.

"Why don't we just drug 'em and harvest 'em now," sneered another.

The arachniwraith grunted in agreement.

"Nah, can't do that. We need them in top condition, and besides, we have to see what's wrong with the white boy," answered a third. "And keep those dogs away from them, we don't want 'em getting no rabies."

"There are two more of them," retorted the second, before closing the hatch. The sounds of their fading footsteps and grumbling alerted the children that the coast was clear and they opened their eyes in relief.

"What are they gonna do to us?" whispered Jody.

"I'm not sure I wanna know," Bailey replied, shuddering a little. "We have to get out of here."

"And how do you think we'd do that?" Ryan retorted, trying and failing to stay as calm as possible. "It's 2 in the morning, I'm exhausted and my chest hurts, your hand is busted and we have no way out."

All positive feelings felt hours before had dissipated. Ryan brought his knees to his chest and buried his face in them, the picture of defeat.

Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, but Jody was starting to feel ready to give up too. She slumped down onto the dirty ground and absent-mindedly ran her fingertips over the floor. Her fingers bumped into something lodged into the floor, and with some difficulty she pulled it out.

Oddly enough, it was a thin metal rod. Ten centimetres long and hexagonal, like a tool used for screwing in certain types of bolt. Maybe it had been dropped when the train station was being built.

"Guys," she spoke up, sitting up again, "I think I know how we're gonna get out of here."

"What's that?" Bailey asked, squinting at the small object she was holding in her fingers.

"Found it, stuck in the dirt," she explained. "I think it's a tool of some sort."

Ryan looked up from his knees and took it from her, coming to his own realisation. "We can pick the lock!"

"And then what?" Bailey asked.

"We find a way out," Jody said.

"But what if those guards see us, and we have the trappers after us again?" Bailey pointed out.

"Well, it's either we do that or we wait for those guards to ... what was it? 'Drug us and harvest us!" Ryan retorted.

"Wow, that makes _me_ have a heart attack!" Bailey commented.

Ryan's head snapped at him indignantly, before he handed the tool back to Jody.

"You're gonna have to do it," he told her. "Bailey's the fastest, but his good hand is busted, and I can't run fast for that long because of my heart, so ..."

Jody nodded; she understood. Shifting past the boys, she fiddled with the lock using the rod. She wasn't as expert a lock-picker as Ryan was, even with said boy's instructions, so it took her rather a long time - by which, Bailey was getting rather agitated.

"Come on!" he urged her.

"I'm trying!" Jody hissed.

The lock clicked open - rather noisily.

Ryan swore on his life he could hear the dogs breathing.

"Run!" Bailey whisper-shouted.

Jody crawled quietly through the tiny trapdoor and scampered away from them. They listened to her fading footsteps and stayed on guard for any sign of danger.

Ryan slipped his jacket back on and rootled around in search of his phone - in a situation like this, you could never have too many torches. He found it, but like Jody's, the screen was smashed and dented. He'd see if it still worked later.

"Let's go," Ryan whispered, after no signs presented themselves as Jody being in danger.

The boys crawled through the door, stood up, and padded in Jody's direction.

"How's your heart?" Bailey asked Ryan.

"Tolerable," Ryan said.

Jody stayed stock-still, hidden around a corner. She desperately wanted to call out to the boys, or even turn her torch on, so they'd find it easier to find her, but she didn't want to alert the guards and arachniwraiths to their location. Would they see if she waved her arms? It wouldn't be easily detectable for the average person in the murky darkness, but Jody was getting the feeling that the guards weren't average people, with the way they were apparently able to understand the arachniwraiths.

Thankfully, no risky activity was necessary, as she saw the boys make their way over to her.

"Oh good," she breathed. "Come on, let's get a closer look."

They travelled as noiselessly as possible, afraid to breathe. In the dark, they found themselves holding hands in order to prevent themselves from losing each other - every time they'd split up so far had ended in disaster, after all.

Where they were now resembled more of a corridor than a tunnel, with straight walls and ceilings. While the railway tunnels were clearly old, with their grimy walls and feeble tracks, this was well-maintained and used often.

They froze when they saw the light up ahead - the arachniwraiths.

"Damn!" Bailey swore - louder than he'd intended.

They heard the now all too familiar _clack-clack-clack_ of the 'wraiths scuttling on the floor. The light grew brighter as they drew nearer.

"Wait!" Jody realised. In the light, she saw something that none of them had seen previously because it had been so dark - a door in the wall.

She broke away from the boys and ran up to the door, attempting to open it. It was thick steel and heavy, and it took her both hands, but it did open.

"Get in!" she urged.

The boys didn't need telling twice. They all ran into the room behind the door, Ryan closing it behind them.

For a full two minutes, they stayed pressed up against the door, their ears strained to pick up any little noise from the corridor.

"That was close," Jody whispered.

"Too close," Ryan agreed, placing a hand over his heart.

"Where are we?" Bailey asked


	9. The Book of Revelations

**Sorry for not updating last week, I had work experience most of the time so I didn't have time to write.**

 **I got my GCSE results on Thursday! 8 A grades, 2 A* grades and just 1 B grade! Whooo!**

 **This is a bit of an exposition-y chapter, more talk than action, but hopefully you'll enjoy it.**

Jody tentatively turned her phone torch on, covering part of it with her hand to stop it shining too brightly.

The room they found themselves in was somewhat peculiar - not because of the room itself, but because of its presence in a location like this.

"That's odd," Ryan murmured. "Is this an office?"

"Or a library," Bailey observed, running his hand over the dusty books on the shelves.

"Why would there be a library in a place like this?" Jody wondered out loud.

"I'm not sure that's our main priority," Ryan said. "If these books are down here, then one of them has to have some information on what the hell is going on."

"True," Bailey agreed. "C'mon, let's take a look."

"Think you can read Bailey?" Ryan sneered slightly.

Bailey glared at him, as Jody rolled her eyes.

"Come on guys," she sighed, weary of their antics.

Ryan took out his half-shattered phone and turned the torch. The room wasn't as big as a regular library - it was only the size of a classroom. None of them were complaining though - it meant they could find the right book faster.

The children spent the next 20 minutes searching the mini library, squinting at the book titles on the spines. Their hands quickly got grimy as they brushed the dust off them, making them look like they were wearing fuzzy grey gloves. Even after they were clean, the books were incredibly difficult to understand. Some titles were faded, some smudged, some had indecipherable fonts.

"I swear, some of these are in a different language," Jody mused aloud.

"That's odd," Ryan responded, frowning a little.

"Not really," Bailey said.

"No, I mean, we heard the guards speaking in English," Ryan explained. "Why would they need all these books in different languages?"

"One of them is probably on how to understand the horned trappers," Jody stated.

"Do we need to find that?" Bailey asked.

"No, we can leave it for now," Jody replied. "Let us know if you find anything."

They continued searching, until Bailey came across a volume that was at least twice as thick as all the others, and unlike the others, this one wasn't covered in dust. It was a lot more well-worn than the others too, with the leather cover worn thin from thumbing.

"Guys, come look at this," Bailey called, attempting to dislodge the book. But it was extremely dense and hard for him to budge with one hand.

Jody and Ryan ran across the room to his location, joining him in pulling the book out.

"We need a crowbar," Ryan commented dryly, rubbing his sore fingers.

"No we don't," Jody said. "Here, look, it's almost out."

But the book decided it was done cooperating and jammed itself between the two books either side of it.

"I know," Jody said. She fished into her back pocket for the tool she had found in the cell, and stuck it between the books, pushing them apart slightly. "Try now."

The boys pulled on the book, and it slid out more easily.

"Damn, this is heavy," Ryan gasped, his eyes popping with the effort of staying standing with the book in his hands.

"Put it down then," Jody said. "Let's read it."

Ryan looked around for a suitable place to put the book down, and finally settled for dropping it on the floor. The book made a startling thud as it landed, the pages splaying outwards.

"Careful!" Jody mouthed, suddenly conscious of any guards or arachniwraiths that may still be lurking around.

Ryan kneeled down in front of the book and shone his phone torch on the pages squinting at the fading brown writing. It was hard to make out, but he could see the pictures.

"Are those diagrams?" Bailey wondered out loud.

"Looks like it," Jody agreed.

"I think that's a horned trapper," Ryan mused, indicating on the page. "And next to it ... is that a person?"

"I think that it's showing a person being turned into one of them," Bailey realised.

"What?!" chorused his friends.

"Look," Bailey said. "There's an arrow between them."

Ryan flicked the page over. Even the individual pages in the book seemed to weigh as much as a whole magazine. "We need to find out how."

He started reading from the top of the page, slowly as it was still hard to see: " _There are special measures that need to be put in place to enact the sacrificial ritual correctly. Only those skilled in the art may attempt it. Firstly, the life must be a human life. Secondly, the knife must be cleaned well and spelled with a necromantic jinx in order for the soul to be harvested. Thirdly, the cuts made cannot be crude hacks - they have to be painstakingly precise with very specific dimensions, shown on the page opposite."_

"I don't wanna know what those are," Jody shuddered. "Just keep reading."

Ryan continued: _"Once the soul has been harvested, the empty shell, or body, remains. The body is taken to the gene pool, where it is decomposed to raw particles and used to breed arachniwraiths. The soul is thrown into a vat containing a solution of ectoplasm, and when enough souls have been harvested, they will be used to restore the Beings of the Burning Underworld to full power ..."_ he trailed off, eyes widening.

All three of them were momentarily struck speechless, before Bailey stuttered, "G-g-go somewhere else, there has to be a way for us to get out of it!"

Ryan shoved his way to the contents page, frantically scanning the titles in search of anything that had potential, before shoving his way back over to a chapter called "Exits" and, not bothering to read all of it out loud, skim-read it, before deciding to summarise it to his friends.

"Basically, there's a way out of here, but it's guarded by the oldest and most powerful horned trappers. Some can cut you up, and some can corrupt your brain with those luminous bulbs they have on their heads or some shit ... anyway, it says that they can only be controlled by the guard spirits, and/or an animal charm."

"'Animal charm'?" Bailey repeated. "Where are we supposed to find one of them?"

"Let's find out," Jody replied, indicating to the book.

Before Ryan could turn another page, however, they heard the door to the library open.

The children froze to the spot.

A translucent silhouette of a man and a stocky dog appeared in the doorway, backlighted by an arachniwraith.

It was only when they heard the characteristic _clack-clack-clack_ did they move, scampering to hide behind a shelf, though Ryan was weighed down by the book.

"We may need it later," he muttered to them.

All three of them stayed stock-still, scared to breath, even as Ryan's heart started to hurt again, listening and watching for any sign of movement. All torches, naturally, had been turned off.

The arachniwraith snorted as it clacked across the room at a walking pace like the dullahan's horse. The children's ears seemed so sharp at that moment that they picked up another little sound - a sound that none of them expected to hear down there in a place like that.

A croak.

They hardly dared to move their heads, but they could see the army green amphibian crawling along the floor beside them ... _towards_ them.

It stopped, and turned to face them, its flabby throat ballooning in and out, staring up at them with an earnest expression.

Just for a brief moment, Ryan swore on his life that his heartbeat had regulated.

Before he could utter a word, however, the frog hopped straight over their heads, landed behind them, and patted a loose rusted metal panel just next to them. Turning to look, their hearts plummeted even further.

A radioactivity sign.


	10. What's Radiation Sickness?

***pokes head out from behind a pile of folders, papers, essays, homework and homework essays* hey, guys, miss me?**

 **Okay, I'm really sorry I haven't updated in over two months, but I'm in the Sixth Form now and I can't update as often as I did in the summer. But as promised in my A/N in Falling Darkness, I would get back to this, and I did!**

 **Let me take a moment to dedicate a few lines to Dark Heart 945. Exactly one year ago yesterday, her and I met for the first time, and we're still going strong one year later. She's been sweet, kind, and positively amazing throughout all the time I've known her, and I promised her I would update this ASAP, so here we are.**

 **When you're done with this chapter, check out her amazing story Demons, freshly published and truly brilliant.**

The children were speechless.

Just when they thought their situation couldn't get any worse, it had.

In the end, only Ryan uttered a word:

"Bugger."

Bailey spoke next, "W-what does that mean?"

Ryan put a finger to his lips, motioning towards the guard and arachniwraith. "I'll tell you later," he mouthed.

The arachniwraith was still clacking along the floor, closely followed by the guard and dog.

"Where could those lives be?!" the guard muttered.

The 'wraith grunted in response, before sniffing harder. It was drawing closer.

At that moment, the frog hopped back over their heads with a croak.

Jody wanted to say, _"Don't!"_ The frog had warned them of the presence of radioactivity down there, and she didn't want it to die at the hands of the evil forces against them - a creature so small would surely be eaten in one gulp by a monster like an arachniwraith.

But she was forced to stay silent - she couldn't give any sort of sign that she and her friends were hiding in there.

The frog padded across the floor in the musty little library, its bright eyes flitting around like it was tracking a tasty-looking fly. Even when it was caught in the light of the 'wraith's eska, it didn't flinch. By contrast, it crawled closer.

The children watched with bated breath.

When the guard and 'wraith were just a couple of metres away from the frog, the overgrown mutant spider froze to the spot.

"What?" the guard said, realising his little minion was no longer trailing him. "What's wrong?"

The arachniwraith didn't move.

The guard's eyes fell on the frog. "Oh, right."

To the surprise of the children, the guard's voice contained a hint of fear and worry, as if the little amphibian was a major obstacle standing in their way.

What he said next surprised them even more: "We can't stay here for long, I have to go get a phial for this little ... _pest._ You can't be trusted with catching lives, as shown by last time, so you'll have to come with me. If the lives are in here, we'll lock the door so that they can't get out."

The guard and arachniwraith turned and strode out of the room, as if in a haste to get away. Only when their footsteps were completely out of earshot did the children dare to discuss what the hell had just happened.

"They were afraid of the frog?!" Ryan hissed.

Bailey shrugged. "That's rich, coming from a person who's scared of dogs."

Jody didn't react, no longer caring enough to admonish Bailey.

The boy persisted, "Why can't you just tell us why you're scared of dogs? Because it's kind of silly without a reason."

"I'll tell you if we get out of here," Ryan replied.

" _When_ we get out of here," Jody corrected.

Ryan shook his head ominously. "No, _if_ we get out of here. Don't you realise what _this_ means?"

He gestured to the radioactivity sign. "I don't know just how radioactive this place is, but we've probably been here long enough to get some of it. Most likely, we're all gonna get radiation poisoning and/or cancer from being down here."

Bailey's eyes popped. _"Cancer?!"_

Ryan nodded solemnly, leaning against the wall with the book on his legs. "That's radiation for you, mate."

"W-well, what is ra-radiation poisoning?" Jody stuttered.

"Not that sure," Ryan admitted. "I've only heard of it a few times, and I just know that people can get it when they're exposed to too much radiation."

"Won't it be in there?" Bailey asked, indicating towards the book.

"Maybe," Ryan said, shifting the book to the floor so he could open and read it. He squinted at the contents, before going to the section about the radioactivity of the whole underground, occult system.

The other two couldn't read upside down, but they guessed from Ryan's facial expressions as he read further on that it couldn't be good. By the time he raised his head to look at them again, his face was pale with dread - somehow, it was just as ashen as when they had been in the cell and he'd been recovering from his most severe angina attack.

It was very apt, seeing how he had to relax his left arm as the familiar shooting pain went through it. At this rate, he'd probably end up having more attacks in the past 24 hours than he'd had for the whole of the rest of his life.

"W-what's wrong?" Bailey asked in the end, feeling sweat starting to bead on his forehead.

Ryan squeezed his eyes shut for a brief moment, before opening them again. Looking at the expressions on his friends' faces suddenly made him feel hundreds of years old - or maybe that was the radiation getting to him.

"This entire train station is made from an ore of uranium," Ryan told them, in a tone that sounded like he was just about ready to give up on life, "one of the most radioactive elements on the planet. Not only that, but those bulbs on the horned trappers' heads? The reason they glow is because they contain polonium, which is _the_ most radioactive element on the planet."

There, it was out, and the looks on their faces now were almost enough to make Ryan regret telling them. Almost - they _had_ to know, no matter how hard it was to hear.

"Just tell us what radiation sickness is, and if we've got it already?" Bailey sighed, slumping against the bookshelf behind them.

"It's not nice," Ryan said bluntly, looking them in the eyes. "It's rotten, and no one wants it. I mean, you have nausea, vomiting, fatigue, all that stuff, but ... ugh, I can't talk about it anymore. We need to get out of here and away from all this radioactivity."

The frog suddenly leapt forward, plopping down onto the book's pages and sitting on them like a lilypad, surprising the children.

"Thanks," was all Ryan said, not knowing what else to say. "You saved us."

He felt rather strange talking to a frog, but it croaked appreciatively.

"You seem to have a lot of faith in that thing," Bailey observed.

"Well, the guards and the horned trappers are scared of it," Ryan replied.

"It's a frog, Ryan," Jody sighed. "How smart can it be?"

In response, the frog croaked indignantly, took a big leap up and landed down on her head, much to the amusement of the two boys.

"Okay, fine," she groaned, picking it off her head and setting it down on the floor in front of her. " _Do_ you actually know how to get out of here?"

It ribbited, and patted a particular subtitle under the 'Exits' chapter they had looked at earlier - _Animal Charms._

She smiled slightly. "I think we've found our animal charm, guys."

"In that case, screw the radioactivity, let's get out of here!" Bailey proposed, standing up and making to get away before Ryan reached out and grabbed his trouser leg.

"Stop," he instructed. "They locked the door, remember?"

Jody brought out the little tool, giving him a look.

"Well, we can't go straight outside, what if the guards are out there?" Ryan went on. "You heard what that one said - they were gonna get something for it. If we don't have it, then we'll be harvested!"

"At least we can get past the horned trappers," Jody said, "and that guard was a bit scared of it too."

"That's true," Bailey murmured. "I mean, if this frog is an animal charm, why don't we just follow it out of here?"

"I guess that makes sense," Ryan said begrudgingly. "I mean, the guards and the horned trappers are scared of it, so we don't have to worry about them catching us."

"Let's go," Bailey urged, standing up. "Come on, lead the way. Ryan, leave the book here, it's weighing you down."

Ryan stood up easily enough, but it took Jody considerable effort. Looking at her face reminded Ryan of the way he looked whenever he tried to move after an angina attack.

"Jodes, you okay?" he asked in concern.

Jody winced. "Think so," she grunted, though she had to hold onto the bookcase for dear life to get herself to stand up.

Ryan shook his head. "No, there's something wrong, Jody. You're finding this way too difficult."

"I'm fine," she insisted, trying to step out ahead of the others, but Ryan grabbed her shoulder, causing her to turn around.

The light in the library was quite dim, but she couldn't miss the steely look in his eyes.

"Back in the tunnel, where I had my angina attack, you told me that I shouldn't have been hiding my medical conditions from you," Ryan said. "Don't act like this is nothing, Jody. We can't help if we don't know what the problem is."

"It _is_ nothing," Jody insisted, trying to pull her shoulder out from Ryan's grip, but with the amount of strength she had, she didn't stand a chance. "I just feel a bit weak, that's all. It's still 3:00 a.m."

Ryan's eyes widened, and he swallowed slowly. "Guys ... this definitely isn't nothing. Jody, you may actually be starting to get radiation sickness."

"What?!" Bailey yelled, his words echoing off the metallic walls. "She-she can't have it, she's been down here for as long as we have, and we haven't got it ... have we?"

"It depends on your level of tolerance," Ryan explained.

The informal diagnosis had shocked Jody down to her core. Ryan had addressed the thought of them dying down there while they were imprisoned together, but it had only seemed a distant, controllable threat. Well, more controllable than this.

"Let's just get out of here," Jody said stiffly, before looking down at the frog. "Lead the way."

Following the frog, they reached the door, and Jody picked the lock with the tool, before carefully shifting it open.


	11. A Heart That Never Worked

**Finally, back in the good old United Kingdom, I spent the 3 days in Dublin, spending time with my extended family for Christmas. But I'm back now, writing this on the plane home.**

 **Hope you guys had a wonderful Christmas, and if you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a wonderful day anyway.**

"Just lean on me," Ryan instructed.

"No," Jody protested. "I don't need your help."

"But you will soon," Ryan warned. "We are calling an ambulance for you the second we get up there, whether you like it or not. Radiation sickness is nasty, and the faster you get it treated, the better."

Jody sighed. "Fine."

The frog hopped forward in a haste to get a move on, and they obediently followed it.

The journey was quite long, even longer than the tunnels they had walked down when they had first fallen down there, and true to Ryan's word, Jody soon found herself struggling to keep walking. It was a good thing that none of them had eaten or drunk a thing for many hours - she was sure she would've thrown up otherwise.

"Save your strength," Ryan whispered to her, offering an arm.

She didn't bother protesting. At this point, she cared little for her image - she only cared about getting out of this gloomy place and to a hospital where they would _stop her from dying._

"What have we come to?" Bailey asked rhetorically. "We're stuck in an underground train station that is also radioactive, running away from some weird guards and a bunch of overgrown mutant spiders who want to harvest our souls so they can use them to bring back some ... what did they call them again, Ryan?"

"'Beings of the Burning Underworld,'" Ryan quoted. "Demons of Hell, essentially."

"Right," Bailey said. "They want to use our souls to summon the demons of Hell, and our bodies will be used to make more spiders."

"Thanks for that Bailey, we hadn't noticed," Ryan said sarcastically.

"Just saying," Bailey said. "I wonder if the others up there have left without us yet?"

"They wouldn't," Ryan said. "Well, they must've called the police for us. Come to think of it, maybe we should make and emergency call. Emergency lines work without service."

"Yeah, and what are we gonna tell the operator?" Bailey asked. "'Help us, we fell down a pit in the forest that appeared out of nowhere and now we're running from scary guards and their overgrown pet spiders who want to steal our souls'? Yeah, like they'll believe that."

The frog croaked, and they realised it had stopped moving and was utterly still on the train track, save for its pulsing throat.

"What's going on?" Jody asked, who had been half-asleep for most of the journey.

"We've stopped, apparently," Bailey explained.

The frog padded forward slowly, placing its feet very carefully on the stones and pieces of track. It bent forward and placed its snout nearer the ground, like it was trying to sniff something out.

 _Clack-clack._

The frog tensed, as did the children.

"Not them again," Bailey groaned.

"Shut up," Ryan hissed.

 _Clack,_ then a moment of silence, followed by a series of idle-sounding grunts. The arachniwraiths were communicating.

"We must be almost there," Bailey realised.

"Yeah, but be careful," Ryan warned. "Remember, their horns can cut us up, and _do not_ look at their bulbs. They can corrupt your brain."

"How'd you get past them last time?" Jody asked suddenly.

"They're blind," Ryan explained. "They couldn't see me, only smell me."

"That means they can also smell the frog," Bailey realised. "Remember in the library back there?"

"Yeah, but they'll also smell us," Ryan said. "We should probably stay a little bit behind, so they smell the frog before they smell us."

"We should be out soon," Jody said, smiling weakly.

"Alright, frog, go out on ahead," Ryan said to it.

To their surprise, the frog stayed frozen for a couple of seconds, before hopping up into the air, turning around as it did so. It landed facing the children with a defiant and somewhat pleading expression. It was as if the little creature seemed anxious of going on ahead without them, like it was relying on them as much as they were relying on it.

Bailey sighed. "Fine, we'll come with you."

They trekked on, and the dim light grew brighter, which in turn caused them to avert their eyes from it. The light was far from blinding, but they heeded Ryan's warning about not looking directly at the arachniwraiths' bulbs, lest their brains be corrupted. The irony of the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel was not lost on them, and while they were glad to get out of there, the risks were not lost on them.

 _Clack-clack-clack-clack._

The children paused, but the frog kept hopping along. In the brighter light, they could see that it wasn't army green, but black on the top and a startling electric blue on the bottom. They had been following a poison arrow frog all along.

At long last, the arachniwraiths came into view - and they made the ones they had already come across look like pet tarantulas.

While the ones they had seen were 5 feet tall, these ones were at least 6 and a half feet in height, with their horns being worn thin, making them appear sharp as knives. Every single one of them had a bulb the size of a football, and while they were not particularly brighter than the bulbs of the typical arachniwraiths, these ones had a harsh neon tinge to them, so much so that even not looking directly at them made one's eyes sting. Their limbs were far sturdier and chunkier, almost like logs. They had the overall impression of seasoned war veterans who had seen and fought every threat imaginable with ease, and they were prepared to take down anything in their way as easily as swatting a fly.

"I'm scared," Jody whispered, who by now was so weak that Ryan was practically carrying her more than anything.

Ryan gave her a gentle squeeze. "We'll get through this. We're almost out, and we can get you to hospital, and we'll be back with the others in not very long."

"Alright." She swallowed down some bile burning in her throat. "Frog, go out on ahead."

The frog turned briefly on the spot, as if scanning the area, before ...

 _BLAM!_

Next thing, the poor animal was lying dead on the floor, in a growing pool of thick, dark red blood.

The children were stricken - had their frog just been _shot?!_

Before they had time to fully process this, however, there came the old _clack-clack-clack_ of the monsters' feet on the track - though the menacing 'wraiths in front of them weren't moving.

That could only mean one thing.

The trio turned around, coming face to face with the regular arachniwraiths closing in on them. With the mutant arachnids present both in front and behind them - and without their animal charm to help them get past them - they braced themselves for what was to come.

But the trappers didn't knock them out and carry them away, like the very first one had done with Ryan several hours before. Instead, the one at the front and on the far left flicked out its hairy leg - to push a lever embedded in the wall of the tunnel.

"What the-" was all Bailey could get out before the floor slipped out from underneath them.

* * *

"Excellent," gloated a husky, grating voice. "It's been an excruciating amount of time since we've been able to get our hands on fresh life."

This, along with an insistent throbbing in his wrist, woke Bailey up, and he realised that he was strapped by the wrists to a hard stone slab, padded only with a course sheet. The bindings provided an explanation as to the pain in his injured wrist, which had been slung in his jacket for most of their little adventure.

His eyes focused on the spot directly above him. The light was dim, but he could make out the outline of a square trapdoor - the second hole that he and his friends had fallen down in the last 48 hours. They had fallen straight into another trap.

His tied wrists meant he couldn't sit up or get away, but he craned his neck around the room to see if he could spot his friends. Eventually, he located them just a few feet away, both still unconscious, with Jody looking like she was on her deathbed as radiation sickness took its brutal toll.

Come to think of it, technically they were all on their deathbeds. They had no way of escaping or getting out here now - they were bound very firmly to their rocky soon-to-be graves by the cuffs, they had no way of reaching the trap door, and they wouldn't be able to get past the most powerful arachniwraiths at the top without their animal charm.

Bailey remembered that Ryan's realisation that they would meet with a terrible fate down there had spawned a severe reaction, but it wasn't until that point where he understood how the boy had felt at that time - a sense of pure, undiluted terror at the prospect of their untimely demise at the hands of these occult, ethereal beings.

At that moment, Ryan himself awoke sharply. "Whass-goin'-on?!"

"Silence!" yelled the guard. The dog at his side barked aggressively at him, as if to drive the point home, causing Ryan to flinch.

"What are we gonna do?!" Bailey squeaked, looking over at his smart friend.

"Don't look at me," Ryan muttered fearfully. "I'm not a freaking superhero."

"We have to do something though," Bailey said, squirming in his cuffs.

Ryan but his lip, before turning his head to his other side where Jody was lying. "Jodes, wake up."

She didn't even stir.

Ryan gritted his teeth, and turned back to Bailey. "Jody's out for the count, we're on our own."

"Good," interrupted the guard that was keeping an eye on them. "We'll be putting it out of its misery when we get round to harvesting its soul."

"It matters little," announced the guard at the front, his arachniwraith 'minion' at his side. "We only need these three more souls in order to accomplish our long-held goal, my friends." He gave them all an evil grin, showing a set of rotten teeth.

Hanging on the wall of the chamber was a dingy leather sheath, from which the hilt of a rather large knife was seen poking out. The head guard walked over and reached a hand out towards it, but instead of taking it by the handle, the knife seemingly slid itself out from the sheath and was held aloft by an unseen force. They sussed out that the spectre, who was currently looking at the knife as thought he had found the Holy Grail, had to be telekinetically controlling it.

"Finally," he said, practically drooling with excitement, "it is time. Exact the spell."

One of the other guards began chanting the incantation in an what sounded like an otherworldly language, and the knife began to glow.

"Yes," the guard gloated, when the spell was done and the knife gleaming. "Now ..."

Keeping the knife in the air, a panel at the back of the room opened up, to reveal what appeared to be a complex, tangled network of metallic strands that were encasing a large, walnut-shaped core. The same polonium-coloured light was streaming out from between the gaps, rippling like water. If one strained their ears, one could hear the faintest voices from behind the network, like cries for help ...

"I'm not giving up," Bailey heard Ryan mutter, struggling against the cuffs with renewed vigour. "There has to be _some - way - out -"_

He was cut off as he felt the cuff on his left wrist give a little, so he kept pushing until it came loose and his hand was free.

"What in the-" the watchful guard started, before Ryan wrenched his other hand free as well. "Why aren't the cuffs holding them?!"

"They need to be loosened at this point!" another retorted. "The soul won't leave the body otherwise!"

Ignoring them, Ryan jumped up off the table-like slab, ran over to the guard, grabbed the levitating knife in mid-air, and rammed it into the core.

The arachniwraiths screeched and started clacking their way over to him. Ryan yanked the knife out and slashed it downwards, severing the wires.

The arachniwraiths collapsed mid-run, their legs buckling and breaking ...

The guard spirits bellowed as they started dissipating from the feet up ...

"NO!" yelled the head guard, as Ryan stabbed the core once again.

The shafts of light grew bigger and brighter. The wires were warping before their very eyes ...

A white cloud of vapour sped out from behind the core like a comet. It was followed, by another, and then another, and what had to be at least fifty more. The unfortunate souls that had been previously harvested by the guards were finally set free, and we clearly wasting no time in getting away from their radioactive prison.

However, while admiring the results of his own handiwork, Ryan let his guard down.

This allowed the head guard to wrench the knife from his grip using his powers. Just as Ryan flicked his head to the side to see him, with his bottom half now completely gone, the guard rammed the knife deep into Ryan's sternum.

It didn't hurt. Not at first.

"RYAN!" Bailey screamed, pulling himself out of his own cuffs, which were now as feeble as string due to the destroyed necromantic source.

The last guards disappeared with a shout, and the arachniwraiths lay still, their bulbs flickering weakly.

"What's happened?"

Bailey turned his head to see that all the action had apparently woken Jody up, though by now she was too sick to even get herself off of her slab.

"I'll show you," Bailey said, running over to her so he could help her off the table, in spite of his injured wrist.

"Where's Ryan?" she asked, as Bailey eased her legs to the floor.

Bailey swallowed, before guiding her over to the spot where their dying friend lay, the knife embedded deep into his chest.

"Ryan!" she shrieked, her eyes popping as she knelt down beside him. "Oh my God, Ryan!" She reached for the hilt, but Bailey grabbed her arm.

"Don't take it out!" he ordered. "He'll bleed to death if you do!"

Ryan's arm was groping unconsciously for something to grab onto, the pain now in full force. It wasn't hurting quite as much as he'd feared - it just felt like another Angina attack. Jody slipped her clammy hand into his, and he gripped it like a vice.

"It's okay," he grunted, forcing his pained eyes open to look his friends in the eye. "My heart never worked properly anyway."

"How can you make jokes at a time like this?!" Bailey yelled. "You're the one that needs an ambulance, never mind Jody!"

"Doesn't matter," Ryan whispered. "I'll be dead before their get here anyway."

"No Ryan!" Jody screamed, tears pricking her stinging eyes. "You-you can't die, you've been the strongest out of all of us, and we still need to get out of here!"

"You still can," Ryan said. "You guys can go escape, get to hospital, go back home, tell everyone about what happened here ... just, without me."

"We won't abandon you," Bailey insisted, feeling a lump form in his throat. "Not after all you've done for us."

They stayed there for what felt like hours upon hours, but in reality was only about five minutes. All the while, they looked one another in the eyes, sharing feelings and silent conversations as they spent their last precious few moments as a trio.

"Guys?"

They looked over at Ryan. His skin appeared slightly translucent and shiny with sweat. His eyes were glazed over and unfocused, his chest shuddering with uneven breaths. He didn't have long left.

"Yeah?" Bailey whispered.

"I'm scared."

Jody could've completely crumbled to dust at that small phrase. Throughout the whole of this whole ordeal, Ryan had tried so hard to keep going, do what was right, keep them as much out of harm's way as possible. He'd been the one to go on ahead to search the tunnels when they'd first gotten down there. He'd volunteered to distract the arachniwraiths when they had been set after them. All those bumps in the road, and now at the end of it, he finally said it.

"You're gonna be alright," Jody replied, squeezing his hand. "You'll get through this." It was the mantra that all of them had repeated throughout the whole thing, and she hoped it would provide him with a glimmer of light in his darkest moment.

Mustering up his last few joules of energy, Ryan turned his head slightly to look his two friends in the eyes, and through the sweat on his face, two clear streaks appeared on his cheeks, and he said one last sentence.

The words had hardly any voice behind them, and could only be heard in the still, cold darkness of the macabre chamber, but they both knew they would remember them for the rest of their lives.

"For God's sake ... please stay till I am sleeping ..."

Jody stayed. She stayed as Ryan's breath hitched, and his hand tensed in hers, like he was trying to cling on to something Earthly even as he was passing away from it. She stayed as he let out one last dying breath, the last bit of gas leaving his lungs with a sound like a sigh. She stayed as Bailey, in a rare act of solemnity, carefully extracted the knife from Ryan's chest, closed his eyelids over his glassy stare and folded his arms over his chest, covering up the grotesque knife wound.

If she ignored the fact that his face was unnaturally pale, and the lack of rise and fall of his chest, she could pretend he was sleeping.

It was only when Bailey stood up with the knife in hand, making to leave, that she spoke. "We-we can't leave him here."

"We're not going to," Bailey replied, stepping over the carcass of an arachniwraith and making his way towards the partially hacked system core.

"No, Bailey!" she yelled, realising what was going to happen. "It'll destroy the whole thing!"

"That's the idea."

"But what if we're taken along with it?"

This made Bailey pause. "What do you mean?"

"As in, we don't know what might happen when the inner workings are destroyed completely. It could end up killing us," Jody said.

Bailey sighed. "We need that book."

"We need Ryan," Jody added, glancing mournfully at her friend's cooling cadaver lying on the floor next to her.

"Yeah," Bailey agreed. "What would he have done?"

Jody shrugged. "I guess ... he would've wanted to stop something like this ever happening again, to anyone."

Bailey nodded, giving her a knowing look, before gesturing to the system centre.

"Go for it," she permitted. "I trust you."

Bailey nodded, and with one slash of the knife still stained with his friend's blood, he destroyed the system centre.

They didn't know what they were expecting when the heart of the system was destroyed. An explosion, an earthquake, a hurricane - none of those. In fact, for a single second that lasted an eternity, it felt as though they had sailed into the eye of the storm.

 ***ruffles feathers* I am evil, aren't I? Yeah, I know I've already killed Ryan once, but like in And I Feel Them Drown My Name, the vision in my head was so clear and I had it for so long that I just couldn't shelve it. Don't worry, I've got another book in the works that'll be published in the New Year, and he'll stay alive and (mostly) well in that.**

 **I took some medical liberties here too. In reality, if you were stabbed in the heart, you would lose consciousness in around 15 seconds, be brain-dead in about 5 minutes and completely dead in 8 minutes. But in a story about arachnidan monsters living with evil spirits in a radioactive underground train station, I think you can suspend your disbelief a bit.**

 **I originally planned to have this chapter and the next in one, but it was getting too long and taking too long to write.**


	12. Now They'll Never Dance Again

**And now, I present to you the reason why I entitled this story The Flood. Well, part of the reason. The rest of it will be in the A/N at the end.**

Calm as it may be, if you managed to sail into the eye of the storm, you wouldn't actually stay there very long.

This scenario was no exception.

Mere seconds after Bailey destroyed the brain of the system, Jody, who was still kneeling on the floor next to Ryan's corpse, felt the slightest vibrations coming from the ground underneath her. Her sickness meant she was too sluggish to react to them at first, but the vibrations escalated to stronger tremors wracking through the sacrificial chamber.

"What's going on?!" Bailey panicked, who was now feeling them too.

"I had a feeling this would happen!" Jody let out.

"Then why did you let me do it?!" Bailey shrieked, struggling to keep his balance.

Before Jody could respond, an alarming cracking sound sounded throughout the chamber - at the wall where the core was embedded in its compartment, a lightning bolt-shaped crevice was creeping up towards the ceiling. Through the channel, they could see the same polonium-coloured light that had been behind the core earlier, providing minute illumination to add to the now-dim bulbs of the arachniwraiths.

A trickle of liquid appeared at the base of the crack, slightly luminous like a plastic glow-in-the-dark children's toy. Bailey tried to bend down to inspect it, but lost his balance in the process, falling onto his hands and knees. He winced as the pain shot through his sprained wrist.

"Bailey, look out!" Jody called, her eyes as wide as dinner plates as the crack started splitting into two, as one kept inching up the wall and across the ceiling, while the other spread sideways. She could tell that wall wouldn't stay standing for long, and Bailey was right next to it!

Bailey scrambled out of the way just in the nick of time as a large chunk of the wall fell away and crumbled to shards. As it did so, however, more of the glowing, slightly viscous liquid gushed out from the space where it had been. It would've been a beautiful sight had they not been in the middle of it.

"What are we gonna do?!" Jody yelled, trying to shuffle away from the disintegrating walls with what little strength she had, but there wasn't much either of them could do about the collapsing ceiling.

More liquid was flowing out from the holes in the wall, causing the level to rise up to about ankle depth. It was incredibly cold and about the consistency of cooking oil, but the sight of some smaller pieces of rubble floating on top of it gave him an idea. Clambering over to where Jody was, he had to practically drag her to sit on a larger piece of wall, in a corner of the room where the wall and ceiling had already completely collapsed so there was no danger of any more crashing on them.

"What do we do now?" she asked, still gripping his arm.

"We wait," Bailey said. "Hopefully we should be able to float away on this."

"But what about Ryan?" she went on, her gaze falling on the cold cadaver that was once her friend, which was now partially obscured by dust and rubble, half-submerged by the liquid.

Bailey bit his lip, feeling his eyes prick. "We're gonna have to leave him here."

"No, we can't!" she insisted, tears evident in her voice as she tried to crawl off the slab, but Bailey held her back.

"Don't!" he yelled. "You'll be crushed if you do!"

"So will he!"

"He won't feel it!" Bailey shouted, before composing himself and toning his voice down. "Look, he sacrificed himself so _we_ could get out of here alive. Don't waste that, please."

Jody stared at Bailey for a few seconds, before she dragged herself back onto the slab and - much to his surprise - sloppily slumped her arms around him in a clumsy hug. He returned it, though he kept his grip firm to keep her upright.

The moment was rudely interrupted by a sudden smash mere feet away from them. A slab of ceiling had given way, plummeting to the ground with an almighty crash like a meteor. The shockwaves caused the cracks in the walls to grow and more liquid to come spewing out from behind them. They felt their tiny raft bob upwards under its own buoyancy.

"We're gonna make it out," Bailey declared confidently.

They kept rising, and Jody stayed clinging to Bailey the best she could in order to stay on the raft. After what felt like ages, it finally rose up past where the ceiling had been - by which time the walls and ceiling of the tunnel above had begun to give way under the tremours. As fragments of the ceiling fell away, faint shafts of moonlight appeared through the holes. They saw the cylindrical chute at the end of the tunnel, surrounded by corpses of arachniwraiths.

"We're gonna make it!" Jody yelled, scrambling off the raft in excitement.

"Jody, no!" Bailey warned. "You'll get-"

CRACK.

A chunk of ceiling had collapsed. It wasn't that big, only a bit bigger than a rugby ball. But it was obviously far denser than that.

It had landed square on Jody's head.

The resulting noise made Bailey feel sick to his stomach. He probably would've thrown up had he eaten a thing over the past 18 hours.

He could hear the sound of fluid sloshing below and behind him. The whole system was flooding!

He pushed himself up and rushed over the Jody, wading through the liquid. He managed to haul her over his shoulder just in time for the flood to catch up with him, sweeping him off his feet. The cold was blinding, and he tried to keep his and Jody's faces above the fluid, to partial success. The current carried them down what was left of the tunnel, towards the exit. He braced himself for impact.

It never came - instead he found himself being sucked up the chute in the stream of fluid, as if being sucked up a straw.

Finally, _finally,_ he broke the surface, pulling himself and Jody onto the dry, twiggy forest floor.

"Jody, Jody!" Bailey yelled, shaking her shoulder. "We're out! We're finally out! Now we just have to ... Jody?"

She hadn't reacted at all to his jubilant celebrating, and when he brought his hand up to touch her head, it came away streaked with warm blood.

Trying to avert his mind from the sour, sick feeling festering in his abdomen, he cast his eyes about the surrounding area. He couldn't see a whole lot as it was still past 4 o'clock in the morning, but the pale moonlight provided a degree of illumination. He could see vast fissures in the ground from where the tunnels and the entire system had given way. The magnitude had been staggering.

This made a thought occur to him - if the quake had been so strong that it had opened up the forest floor, surely they must've been felt by some people nearby, right? Wouldn't people come to investigate, discover him and Jody, send for help? Wouldn't there already be a search party out looking for them? It had only been a day, they wouldn't give up that quickly.

With that thought in his mind, Bailey allowed sleep to overtake him, hugging Jody to himself like a teddy bear as she gradually grew cold and stiff in his arms.

* * *

Once the investigation team had received reports of the small but immensely powerful quake with the epicentre being at Ashdene woods - the same spot where three adolescents had mysteriously vanished barely a day before - it took them less than an hour to arrive on the scene. They chose to take the helicopter there, and once they saw the full extent of the damage, they immediately concluded that they had made the right choice.

The crevices in the ground were each at least a mile long, and when they looked down them, they saw that the bottoms of them were strangely visible due to what appeared to be a glowing fluid lying on the floors.

After strenuous searching, at long last they turned up a result.

Bailey Wharton lying out cold on the floor at the end of one of the pits, with Jody Jackson's corpse in his arms.

"My Lord," one of them breathed, unable to take his eyes off of the sheer tragedy in front of him. "What on Earth could've happened to them?!"

"Call 999!" ordered the leader of the search team. "Tell them to air lift, there's no way the ambulance will work here."

With that, he strode over to the two children, with the intent on getting as much information as humanly possible out of them.

"Hey," he coaxed, gently nudging Bailey. "Can you hear me?"

Slowly, Bailey's bleary eyes peeled open, glazed over with exhaustion. He became more alert at the unfamiliar face, however.

"What's-goin'-on?" he slurred, frowning slightly.

"You're being rescued," the man said calmly. "It's gonna be okay, we're gonna get you home."

Bailey's eyes shifted to Jody, who was in the exact same position as she'd been in when he'd fallen asleep.

In daylight, he could see just how brutal radiation sickness had been on her. In the space of several hours, her face had sunken inwards and her hair was not nearly as thick and healthy as it had previously been. A thin, pearly film of the liquid - which he would later learn was the ectoplasm that had held the trapped souls - clung to her clothes, skin and hair, glinting under the harsh light that he still hadn't properly adjusted to, having been in the dark for so long.

He thought of Ryan, buried somewhere under the rubble and fluid, down in the macabre chamber. A crude grave - Ryan had deserved so much better.

It was all too much. His eyes started pricking, his face contorted and he suddenly found himself blubbering like a toddler in front of the stranger in uniform.

The man didn't judge. He pulled Bailey close to him, didn't force him to speak and just let him pour his emotions out.

It didn't take long for the paramedics to arrive in their helicopter.

"C'mon, son," said a paramedic, shaking Bailey's shoulder as he stayed firmly pressed into the investigator's chest. "Let's get you fixed up."

Hardly worth trying, Bailey thought. There was no hospital stay long enough to heal the wounds in his heart - heal the wounds in _Ryan's_ heart. Nonetheless, he went with them. They let him hang on to Jody, knowing they could not pry her off of him.

At the hospital, when he came face-to-face with Mike and May-Li again, he immediately received the longest, tightest hug he thought anyone could ever receive, especially as it was from both of them at the same time. It made him feel like a wafer-thin slice of ham in a very large sandwich.

"I'm never letting you out of my sight again," he heard Mike whisper tearfully into his ear.

Eventually, Bailey was taken for what had to be the longest medical examination to date. He was given a physical checkup, along with a full-body X-ray, CT scan and a full-body MRI scan.

By the end of it, the prognosis was dismal to say the least. He was forced to tell, re-tell and re-live his story from his hospital bed.

The earthquake squad had to be called to carry out an extremely thorough search of the pits. No stone was left unturned in searching for Ryan's body. They had also been ordered to carry out this search in radiation-proof suits, as the post-mortem of Jody and Bailey's examination showed that they both had varying degrees of radiation sickness. While the search team was down there, they reported the presence of large arachnidan monsters, the likes of which had never been seen or even theorised.

They eventually managed to find the young teen down at the deepest point in the pit, submerged in the mysterious, luminous liquid. Though his body was broken, the expression on his face was serene and peaceful.

* * *

Word soon spread around those working in the ICU that young Bailey Wharton was fading fast. The extent of radiation exposure was on par with working in the X-ray room without any protection.

They feared that the radiation had even affected his brain. After all, how else would you explain his incoherent murmurings about hearing a frog croaking inches away from his ear?

Dr Afia even reported to Mike and May-Li that he'd been heard talking to two people by the names of Ryan and Jody.

Upon hearing this, May-Li had to sit down heavily and bury her face in her hands. "Oh Lord, what if he doesn't know?"

"He knows," Mike replied, his voice laboured with grief. "The post-mortem results say that Ryan died not long before they were found - of a knife wound to the chest."

May-Li sighed deeply, her hands running through her hair. "Oh Mike, what on Earth could've happened to them?"

"You heard Bailey's story."

"What, giant radioactive spiders trying to steal their souls?!" May-Li let out sarcastically. "Anyway, that's not what I mean. I mean, what did they do to deserve this? How could this have gone so wrong?"

Mike bit his lip and squeezed his eyes. "This is all my fault. I shouldn't have told them the story about the pit."

"You weren't the one that drove the knife into that boy's chest," Dr Afia said calmly.

Meanwhile, Bailey was lying motionless on the bed. He looked truly awful - frail as a twig, hair thin and scraggly, his skin flaky.

He no longer had the strength to speak out loud through his cracked lips, but he still spoke to his deceased friends in his mind.

 _My arm hurts, it feels all swollen up, I shouldn't have used it. I don't want to cut it off, not like that guy who had to cut his own arm off ... what was that guy's name again, Ryan?_

 _"Aron Ralston."_

 _Yeah, that was it ... wait, are you here?_

 _"Yes."_

Slowly, labouriously, Bailey opened his eyes.

There, standing over him, was Ryan. It had only been a week since the other's boy's death, but when you're lying deteriorating in a hospital bed, for Bailey, it felt like an eternity.

 _I'm dreaming._

"No you're not," Ryan said, taking a seat on the bed next to Bailey.

 _But you're dead ... aren't you?_

"Sadly, yes," Ryan replied. "But I'm still real, mate."

 _What are you doing here?_

"Thought I'd come and visit you," Ryan explained. "Much as I hate to admit it, I missed you."

 _Me too._

A frog croak sounded in Bailey's ear. It had been an occurrence so regular that it no longer startled him. That didn't mean he wasn't curious, however.

 _What's that?_

"That's Fritz," Ryan said, picking up the amphibian off of the pillow. Bailey recognised the jet black and electric blue colouring on his skin. "He seems to like you."

Perhaps it had been a figment of his befuddled mind, but Bailey swore that the frog looked happy to see him.

 _What's it like up there?_

"Want to find out?"

This wasn't Ryan's voice. In the corner of his eye, he saw Jody standing next to the bedside table. She looked different than from when he'd last seen her - vibrant and healthy as opposed to the radiation-afflicted walking corpse she'd been in her final living moments.

 _I can't._

"Why not?" Jody asked.

 _I don't want to die. Not yet. I need to talk to Mike and May-Li, see them one last time._

"He doesn't have long left," Dr Afia's voice came in from just outside, before they heard the door open and she walked inside, with Mike and May-Li in tow.

"Hey, Bailey," May-Li whispered, sitting on a chair next to Bailey's bed, trying to crack a smile. "Good to see you."

Dr. Afia, Ryan and Jody temporarily backed off, to allow their former guardians to make their goodbyes uninterrupted.

"Did you hear what the doctor said?" Mike asked, taking a seat next to his colleague.

Bailey couldn't speak, but he managed a minute dip of the chin.

"We're really sorry," May-Li said, tearing up as she ran a hand through what was left of Bailey's hair.

"No, _I'm_ really sorry," Mike said, squeezing his eyes. "It's my fault that Ryan and Jody are dead, and that you will be soon."

Bailey mustered up his strength to dip his head from side to side, communicating as best he could that he didn't blame Mike. It had been his own brilliant idea to find the pit in the first place. He was the one responsible, not Mike.

Ryan and Jody stepped forward again. "You ready?" Jody asked.

 _Yes._

She extended her hand. Bailey attempted to lift his non-injured hand to meet it, but Ryan shook his head. "Your other arm."

Perplexed, Bailey tried - and to his surprise he was able to lift it as easily as if he had full strength. He brought it forward to meet Jody's hand, and the second their fingers touched, he felt lighter, stronger.

She tugged gently, and he felt himself rise into an upright sitting position, then a standing. He saw his friends and even Fritz beaming, and they instantly embraced.

Dr. Afia turned the lights down in respect as Bailey's heart monitor flatlined. But as Mike and May-Li were standing up, making to leave, they swore they saw all three deceased children standing next to the bed, hugging and clinging onto each other as if they could not bear to let go.

 **They say there are two types of authors in the world - those that cry when they kill the best character(s) and those that smile, laugh, and have a cup of tea with Satan.**

 **I'll admit, it was actually very hard to kill our two other leads here. I just needed them all to be together again with little Fritz, who was named courtesy of Dark Heart 945, who is probably out for my blood right now.**

 **I was struggling to come up with a title of this story, but then it came to me when I put my playlist on shuffle and the first song that came up was Take That's song The Flood. The title of this chapter was taken from a lyric from that song.**


	13. Epilogue: On the Edge of Forever

**Well, folks, it's been a year. If I were decent at planning, I would've probably published one chapter per month, but because I'm not, this is what you're getting.**

 **Like always, I absolutely must give credit to Dark Heart 945. If it weren't for her, this story probably wouldn't have become what it is, but more than that - she's the sister I never had and she's been there for me for another year, putting up with my silliness and weirdness and just being so kind and smart, so this chapter is for her, and for another very happy birthday.**

"Do you believe in ghosts?" Riley Wallace asked Daniel Stevens.

The two boys were strolling through the woods one September morning, sharing a packet of Doritos and talking about random things.

"Why do you ask?" Daniel responded.

"Because these woods are said to be haunted," Riley said casually.

Daniel snorted in disbelief. "Yeah, right."

"I'm serious," Riley insisted, taking a detour to the left. "Here, I'll show you."

With scepticism, Daniel tailed after his friend, stopping only when they came to a clearing. Or at least it seemed like a clearing because there was very little dirt for trees to grow on due to the fissures that remained in the ground. Grass and weeds had grown sparsely on their soily walls, with the faintest residue of luminous ectoplasm lying on the floors. The fluid had a very high boiling point and hadn't evaporated off, even over the last fourteen months.

"Three children died here," Riley went on, indicating to the commemorative marble block:

 _This plaque was put up in memory of all the victims of the Arachnidan Cult, an evil necromantic group that had been claiming victims since 1896. On July 17th 2016, the Cult, which had previously only been thought to be an urban myth, was discovered to be real after it was dismantled by Ryan Reeves, 14, Bailey Wharton, 15, and Jody Jackson, 14. Tragically, all three children died from the cult's actions and the radioactive conditions of their lair._

"Are we even allowed to be here?" Daniel asked once he'd finished reading the plaque. "This says this place is radioactive."

"They say it's safe now*," Riley dismissed, putting the Doritos bag down. "Apparently radioactive things get less radioactive over time."

"How can you be so sure it's haunted then?" Daniel asked.

"My cousin told me she came here last month, dropped her mood ring on the floor and it disappeared without a trace," Riley said.

Daniel looked down at the leafy, twiggy forest floor. It seemed like any little thing dropped on there could get lost easily, ghosts or no ghosts.

"My uncle also lost his Swiss Army Knife here," Riley went on, "and my aunt, her copy of _A Clockwork Orange."_

"Why was she bringing a book with her to a place like this?" Daniel asked.

Riley shrugged. "The same reason we brought Doritos?"

"Can I have another, by the way?"

"Sure," Riley said, looking around for where he'd put down the bag, only to come up blank. "I could've sworn I put it down right here ..." He trailed off, staring straight at Daniel for a few seconds.

Daniel got the message and proceeded to sprint back down the direction they came, Riley hot on his heels.

* * *

 _Meanwhile, in the world of the dead, with three immature spirits who still have the ability to cross dimensions ..._

"Should you even be feeding him those?" Jody asked, watching as Bailey held the half-eaten bag of Doritos open in front of Fritz while the little frog's tongue flicked around the inside.

"Frogs aren't picky eaters," Bailey shrugged. "Besides, we're all dead anyway. What's the worst that could happen?"

"Oh yeah, forgot about that," she muttered sarcastically. "You know, Ryan won't be too happy if he comes back to find you feeding his pet."

Fritz croaked indignantly at being called a 'pet', before catching a Dorito on his tongue and flicking it in Jody's direction.

"He probably won't be back for ages," Bailey said. "Last time he decided to go exploring, he didn't come back for a month."

"You try navigating your way out of the Amazon without any equipment."

The other two looked up to see that Ryan had appeared again, looking slightly disconcerted. Fritz, however, turned with a croak and hopped onto his owner's shoulder.

"Where did you go this time?" Jody asked. "The Sahara?"

"No, I went there ages ago," Ryan said. "There's nothing to see there anyway, unless you like sand. I just went to America."

"America?" Bailey repeated. "Isn't that where-"

"Yes," Ryan interrupted, a shadow passing over his expression. "She wasn't half scared when she saw me appear in the room out of nowhere." He tried to smile, but the corners of his mouth seemed weighed down by the memories. "She knew I was dead, of course. The whole thing was all over the news all over the world. She didn't even care enough to watch our funeral on TV." He clenched his ethereal fist. "She's never coming back to Britain, not even to send for Chloe. She doesn't care about either of us."

Jody and Bailey were silent for a moment, unsure of how to respond. Bailey's father had been utterly stricken by the news of his son's illness and even visited him in the hospital, though Bailey himself only found this out when Jody told him later, being too out of it at the time to comprehend anything. His mother, real or fake, never gave him a second thought, not even during their public, televised funeral.

Jody's family hadn't been quite as devastated by the news of her death, but they at least had the decency to show up to the private funeral and look appropriately sombre, even Kingsley. Chloe had been there too, looking like she would rather be tetraplegic if it meant having her brother back.

"Chloe's probably better off without her," Jody said in the end.

"What did you say to her?" Bailey asked.

"I told her that I would haunt her every minute of every day until the day she died."

"And are you going to?"

"No way," Ryan said. "She fell asleep soon enough after, so she'll probably just think it was a bad dream."

"You could still scare her every once in a while," Bailey suggested.

Ryan shrugged. "Where'd you get the Doritos?" he asked, to change the subject.

"Two boys were walking past the pit with them, so Bailey decided to steal them," Jody said, glaring slightly at Bailey.

"We haven't had Doritos in forever," Bailey defended. "Besides, Fritz likes them."

The frog croaked in agreement, but Ryan went over and grabbed the bag. "Only I can feed him, he's my frog. You can have Mischief when he dies."

"Hey!" Bailey exclaimed.

"Told you he'd be annoyed," Jody said, turning her attention back to reading _A Clockwork Orange._

"Why are you wasting time here anyway?" Ryan asked. "We only have nineteen more years before we lose the ability to cross over. Why waste them stuck up here?"

"We've moved on," Bailey explained. "Time to enjoy our time at peace."

"Suit yourselves," Ryan said. "For me, dying has let me live the life I never had. I've seen things that you have to see to believe."

"I've had enough of seeing unbelievable things," Jody chimed in. "It was your stupid bet about them that cost all of us our lives."

"You still owe me 15 quid, by the way," Bailey added.

"Oh yeah, I should've left it to you in my will," Ryan said sarcastically, before his tone change to sincere. "But come on, we've been given a chance to _live._ Really live, not just be alive."

"He's got a point," Bailey said, after a pause. "I mean, what's the worst that can happen to us? It's not like we can die again."

Jody was silent for a long moment, before folding the corner of the page she was on and closing the book. "Where to next?"

 ***Uranium actually has a half-life of 700 million-4.5 billion years (depending on which isotope of uranium), so 14 months isn't remotely long enough for the radioactivity to have reduced enough to be safe. Thankfully, Riley, Daniel and everyone else who happened to pass won't have stayed there long enough for it to affect them.**

 ** **Shameless self-plug: _A Spine-Tingling Tale,_ my other story that's hopefully quite different to this. Never mind that I'm a little miffed at the lack of reviews on its last chapter. ****

**Well, that was The Flood. Thank you, everyone, for following this story, Dark Heart 945 especially, reading and reviewing and hopefully enjoying reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.**

 **With everything in me,**

 **Justice.**


	14. Important Please Read

**Sorry about this, but something is going on that needs to be addressed.**

 **Those who have read this whole story will know that I am very good friends with Dark Heart 945 and it has recently come to my attention that there is another user that has been pretending to be her on anon, posting reviews that are odd at best and downright cruel at worst. Examples include posting a review to Linneagb's story Hiding Place that said, "Det här är för långt. Kan du förkorta det lite, kanske?" which roughly translates to, "This is long. Can you abbreviate it, perhaps?" so I guess they were telling her to shorten her story because they felt it was too long. I was also told by breather89 that this individual attacked her because of her religion, which is never okay. They are doing this under an innocent girl's name and it needs to stop.**

 **On her story Demons, (which you should absolutely go and read if you haven't already) there was one Guest reviewer posting some very negative and vague reviews. Like, not even constructive criticism type reviews, they were just straight up trolling, telling her to "don't do what is physically impossible for you" and accusing her of being "one of them", without ever clarifying what that meant. At the time, we just laughed them off (if, for whatever reason, you don't want to read Demons in full, you should at least read her Author's Note at the beginning of Chapter 12 because it is amazing) and eventually they backed off.  
**

 **We're not entirely sure if the person pretending to be her is the same person who was posting the vague, negative reviews on Demons, but whether they are or not, I'd advise everyone to be on the lookout. If someone posts a review on anon under the name Dark Heart 945, she wanted me to tell you that it's not her, so please do not attack or demonise (no pun intended) her for it.**

 **To the person pretending to be her, please stop. Pretending to be someone else on the Internet is never okay. You're not gaining anything by doing this, you're just making people upset. If you want to express your opinion on other people's stories, either make your own account or guest review under a different name. Please, stop pretending to be Dark Heart 945. If you are the same person as the hater Guest on Demons, at least have the decency to explain yourself instead of making vague, negative comments that don't make a lick of sense.**

 **That is all I will say on this matter. We mustn't feed this troll.**

 **Justice.**


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